G
Guest
Guest
I can't explain it briefly (there was a man from Transylvania), but I have special feelings for Romania. Given the country's history of the past few decades I found this article incredibly sad. - Perdita
----------------------
Dracula Theme Park: Idea That Just Won't Die
By JOHN TAGLIABUE - NY Times (1.11.2004)
No one knows Vlad the Impaler's drinking tastes beyond, well, his favorite refreshment. Yet a beer brewer and a soft-drink bottler are two early sponsors of a proposed theme park in Romania to be built around the character of Dracula.
The park would include a golf course, a water park, some Dracula-inspired rides and a variety of other family attractions, on a site just north of Bucharest rather than in Vlad's native Transylvania.
Dracula was a nickname for Prince Vlad the Impaler, a real 15th-century figure in Romanian history, as the ruler of Walachia. But in the West, the name Dracula refers to the vampire character in Bram Stoker's 1897 gothic novel of the same name.
Over the years, the fictional Dracula grew in popularity and turned up in all sorts of shapes, played in the movies by Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee. One of his last major appearances was in the 1992 film by Francis Ford Coppola, "Bram Stoker's 'Dracula,' " in which he is called Vlad.
About the time the Coppola movie appeared, Romanians themselves were discovering that they could market the fictional Dracula. Nicolae Paduraru recalls how in 1993, four years after the collapse of Communism in Romania, he founded the Transylvanian Society of Dracula in Sighisoara, his and Vlad's hometown. The idea, he said in a recent phone conversation, was to attract scholars and historians to explore both the historical figure and the Victorian tale.
Without sponsors, the society foundered until Mr. Paduraru, a former tourism ministry official, hatched the idea to raise funds by organizing tours of Vlad's old territories. A company that Mr. Paduraru also founded in 1993, Mysterious Journeys, markets through travel agents and its own Web site (www.mysteriousjourneys.com) trips to Vlad's major haunts in Transylvania, costing $60 to $70 a day.
Mr. Paduraru says there have been dozens of proposals for Dracula parks across Romania, in towns like Brasov and Poienari, and at the Borgo Pass. Most notable was a plan, proposed by the minister of tourism in 2001, for a park at Sighisoara. A company was set up, with the town council of Sighisoara as its main shareholder.
But Sighisoara is a Unesco World Heritage Site as "a fine example of a small, fortified medieval town," and outraged opposition from cultural organizations, environmental groups like Greenpeace and celebrities like Prince Charles caused the Romanians to step back. In the end, the government commissioned a feasibility study and last year proposed building the park not in Transylvania, but near Bucharest.
Some, like Mr. Paduraru, objected.
"If you visit Sherlock Holmes, you don't go to Manchester, you go to London,'' he said. "Romeo and Juliet are not in Milan, they're in Verona.''
Nevertheless, in October the Romanian government approved the plan. A new company, Dracula Park S.A., was established to find investors and begin design and construction. Sorin Marica, a tourism ministry official who is president of Dracula Park, said cost estimates range from $47 million to $82 million.
In an e-mail message, Mr. Marica said the park would feature "all the classical attractions of amusement parks,'' like roller coasters and other rides; a golf course; a water park; tracks for horse and automobile races; and models of Romanian cities and famous buildings. He said work was expected to begin in the spring.
Officials like Mr. Marica estimate that the park will attract as many as a million visitors a year, perhaps 20 percent of them foreign tourists, drawing investment and jobs. Two early investors, the Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company and Brau Union, Austria's largest brewery, have signed on, pledging $150,000 and $500,000.
Yet some argue that the last thing that Romania - with a floundering economy, widespread corruption and one of the lowest per-capita incomes in Europe - needs is a Dracula theme park. Last year, Arpad Bako, a member of a citizens group that helped stop the project in Sighisoara, asserted that Romanian families, with an average monthly income of about $60, could hardly afford the projected $5 entrance fee and the further $5 visitors would have to spend to make the park profitable.
"A family of four would have to spend $40, nearly one month's income," Mr. Bako wrote in a newspaper article.
David Camp, a theme park consultant with Economics Research Associates in London, is equally pessimistic. While there "seems to be several suppliers that are driving it forward," he said of the plan, there is still uncertainty how the rest of the money would be raised.
Another problem, Mr. Camp said, is that "the plan is to boost tourism.'' Yet with the exception of Orlando and the Disneyland Paris park in France, he said, theme parks are visited by local and regional residents.
The sponsors are not fazed. Michael Bickstein, a spokesman for Brau Union, said the brewery had exclusive rights to promote and sell beer in the park for 10 years; Coca-Cola Hellenic has a similar arrangement.
"When the park is finished,'' he said, "Dracula won't be drinking blood, but beer.''
But barring some preternatural event for which Transylvania has a certain tradition, Dracula may have to make do with blood for a good while to come.
----------------------
Dracula Theme Park: Idea That Just Won't Die
By JOHN TAGLIABUE - NY Times (1.11.2004)
No one knows Vlad the Impaler's drinking tastes beyond, well, his favorite refreshment. Yet a beer brewer and a soft-drink bottler are two early sponsors of a proposed theme park in Romania to be built around the character of Dracula.
The park would include a golf course, a water park, some Dracula-inspired rides and a variety of other family attractions, on a site just north of Bucharest rather than in Vlad's native Transylvania.
Dracula was a nickname for Prince Vlad the Impaler, a real 15th-century figure in Romanian history, as the ruler of Walachia. But in the West, the name Dracula refers to the vampire character in Bram Stoker's 1897 gothic novel of the same name.
Over the years, the fictional Dracula grew in popularity and turned up in all sorts of shapes, played in the movies by Bela Lugosi and Christopher Lee. One of his last major appearances was in the 1992 film by Francis Ford Coppola, "Bram Stoker's 'Dracula,' " in which he is called Vlad.
About the time the Coppola movie appeared, Romanians themselves were discovering that they could market the fictional Dracula. Nicolae Paduraru recalls how in 1993, four years after the collapse of Communism in Romania, he founded the Transylvanian Society of Dracula in Sighisoara, his and Vlad's hometown. The idea, he said in a recent phone conversation, was to attract scholars and historians to explore both the historical figure and the Victorian tale.
Without sponsors, the society foundered until Mr. Paduraru, a former tourism ministry official, hatched the idea to raise funds by organizing tours of Vlad's old territories. A company that Mr. Paduraru also founded in 1993, Mysterious Journeys, markets through travel agents and its own Web site (www.mysteriousjourneys.com) trips to Vlad's major haunts in Transylvania, costing $60 to $70 a day.
Mr. Paduraru says there have been dozens of proposals for Dracula parks across Romania, in towns like Brasov and Poienari, and at the Borgo Pass. Most notable was a plan, proposed by the minister of tourism in 2001, for a park at Sighisoara. A company was set up, with the town council of Sighisoara as its main shareholder.
But Sighisoara is a Unesco World Heritage Site as "a fine example of a small, fortified medieval town," and outraged opposition from cultural organizations, environmental groups like Greenpeace and celebrities like Prince Charles caused the Romanians to step back. In the end, the government commissioned a feasibility study and last year proposed building the park not in Transylvania, but near Bucharest.
Some, like Mr. Paduraru, objected.
"If you visit Sherlock Holmes, you don't go to Manchester, you go to London,'' he said. "Romeo and Juliet are not in Milan, they're in Verona.''
Nevertheless, in October the Romanian government approved the plan. A new company, Dracula Park S.A., was established to find investors and begin design and construction. Sorin Marica, a tourism ministry official who is president of Dracula Park, said cost estimates range from $47 million to $82 million.
In an e-mail message, Mr. Marica said the park would feature "all the classical attractions of amusement parks,'' like roller coasters and other rides; a golf course; a water park; tracks for horse and automobile races; and models of Romanian cities and famous buildings. He said work was expected to begin in the spring.
Officials like Mr. Marica estimate that the park will attract as many as a million visitors a year, perhaps 20 percent of them foreign tourists, drawing investment and jobs. Two early investors, the Coca-Cola Hellenic Bottling Company and Brau Union, Austria's largest brewery, have signed on, pledging $150,000 and $500,000.
Yet some argue that the last thing that Romania - with a floundering economy, widespread corruption and one of the lowest per-capita incomes in Europe - needs is a Dracula theme park. Last year, Arpad Bako, a member of a citizens group that helped stop the project in Sighisoara, asserted that Romanian families, with an average monthly income of about $60, could hardly afford the projected $5 entrance fee and the further $5 visitors would have to spend to make the park profitable.
"A family of four would have to spend $40, nearly one month's income," Mr. Bako wrote in a newspaper article.
David Camp, a theme park consultant with Economics Research Associates in London, is equally pessimistic. While there "seems to be several suppliers that are driving it forward," he said of the plan, there is still uncertainty how the rest of the money would be raised.
Another problem, Mr. Camp said, is that "the plan is to boost tourism.'' Yet with the exception of Orlando and the Disneyland Paris park in France, he said, theme parks are visited by local and regional residents.
The sponsors are not fazed. Michael Bickstein, a spokesman for Brau Union, said the brewery had exclusive rights to promote and sell beer in the park for 10 years; Coca-Cola Hellenic has a similar arrangement.
"When the park is finished,'' he said, "Dracula won't be drinking blood, but beer.''
But barring some preternatural event for which Transylvania has a certain tradition, Dracula may have to make do with blood for a good while to come.
