Feeding Off Dracula's Blood and Gore
Reuters - Apr 7, 2003 - 10:44 AM (ET)

SNAGOV, Romania (Reuters) - "Some blood on the house," says the waitress at Bucharest's Club Count Dracula restaurant and puts a red colored drink on the table.

Guests dine on deep-fried rat -- chicken shaped like a large rodent -- while an actor playing the bloodthirsty vampire waves his black cape among the tables and sometimes bites a willing victim's neck.

Such gore is only a glimpse of what's in store when Romania constructs a Disneyland-style Dracula Park at Snagov, north of the capital, hoping to attract a million visitors a year.

Horror rides, catacombs and a vampirology institute are included in the plans for the $30 million theme park which will be built on 740 acres of state land with private funds in an effort to lure tourists to the poor Balkan country.

"It's an original, non-conventional, even shocking project," Romania's Tourism Minister Dan Matei Agathon told Reuters. "I want to use Dracula to promote Romanian tourism."

Post-communist Romania is just beginning to capitalize on one of its most recognizable names, made world famous by Hollywood movies but virtually unknown locally during four decades behind the Iron Curtain.