ARTEVENTIA and the Fear at the Park shows
Each autumn, Parc Astérix changes its face. As night falls, the rides, pathways and familiar sets become the playground of a far darker world, where visitors no longer simply watch: they move through the heart of an experience made of ruptures, sound, flames, smoke, light and apparitions.
For the 2025 edition of Peur sur le Parc, ARTEVENTIA is active across several areas of the park, supporting a range of nighttime experiences—from the show projected onto the façade of OzIris to special effects integrated into the scare zones and the park’s shows.
That diversity of formats is precisely what makes the project compelling. Here, there is no single stage, no single language. Each space dictates its own rules and its own creative language.
OzIris, when the ride becomes a stage
Among the highlights of the 2025 night events, the OzIris show turns the façade of this iconic attraction into a true canvas for creation. The park presents it as one of the evening’s major rendezvous, with a sound-and-light show projected directly onto the attraction’s Egyptian world.
ARTEVENTIA develops a creative language blending sound, light, video mapping and water effects, within staging designed to make the most of the site’s volumes, lines and visual identity.
“What I love about this kind of project is that we don’t build a stage in front of the attraction. The attraction is already the stage. You have to start from its architecture, its world, and the way the public knows it, to transform it without distorting it,” explains Édouard Grégoire, ARTEVENTIA’s artistic director.
The challenge, then, is not only to project images or add light. It is to shift the perception of the set, to create breaks, crescendos and transitions capable of giving the attraction a different presence once night has fallen.
Special effects at the heart of the action
Elsewhere in the park, the relationship with the audience changes completely.
In the scare zones and certain Peur sur le Parc shows, visitors move within the action. The effects are no longer watched from a distance: they erupt just a few metres away, accompany characters, extend a scene, or abruptly transform the atmosphere of a place.
ARTEVENTIA contributes in particular with flame, smoke and ambience effects, integrated into different areas of the event.
In 2025, the park is also introducing the Camp des Lames d’Acier, a new nighttime terror zone built around two shows, Le Dernier Brasier and Brakkor : L’Affrontement, in a world where combat, fire and industrial atmospheres take centre stage.
In this kind of environment, technology must almost disappear.
“A scare zone works in the opposite way to a front-facing show. The visitor isn’t seated—they move, they turn around, they can be surprised from multiple directions. So the effect has to feel as though it naturally belongs to the set and the action. If the audience starts looking for the technical apparatus, you lose part of the immersion.”
This pursuit of invisibility is essential. Smoke can conceal a perspective. A flame can tip the mood in a fraction of a second. A trigger can draw the eye away and set up an appearance elsewhere. The special effect then becomes less a spectacle object than a true tool of storytelling.
From the lake to Cyrius, multiple languages for a single event
ARTEVENTIA’s involvement is not limited to OzIris or the scare zones.
The teams also contribute to other Peur sur le Parc installations, notably around the lake show and on Cyrius, with special effects combining flames, smoke and atmospheric effects.
Each area calls for a different creative language.
By the lake, space, distance and reflections allow for a broader, more scenic approach. On Cyrius, by contrast, the effects must blend into the action and support the pace of a live show. In the scare zones, proximity to the audience demands an entirely different way of shaping surprise and triggering cues.
“It’s precisely this diversity that makes theme-park projects so exciting. You can use similar technologies, yet have to rethink them completely depending on the location, the distance from the audience, the rhythm, or the story being told.”
This adaptability lies at the heart of ARTEVENTIA’s work in theme parks.
Creating for a show that has to live
Unlike a one-off event, the Peur sur le Parc installations must work night after night, sometimes for several weeks.
In 2025, the park is staging 12 night events between October and November. Each installation must therefore retain its impact while meeting demanding constraints in safety, maintenance, repeatability and operations.
That profoundly changes the way an effect is conceived.
A spectacular idea only has value if it can be repeated, controlled and integrated into the park’s overall operation. Artistic creation and operational reality therefore move forward together from the very first stages.
“In a park, a good idea also has to be an operable idea. You have to think about safety, cycles, teams, maintenance, and how the public will move through the space. Creation can’t be separated from operations.”
Peur sur le Parc thus illustrates a distinctive facet of ARTEVENTIA’s expertise: a company able to deliver across multiple formats within a single event—from monumental spectacle to close-up effect, from mapping to atmospheric effects, from an attraction façade to the very heart of a scare zone.
The language changes.
The goal, however, remains the same: to make the technology disappear and let the experience take over.
Photo Credits: Frédéric Lepla
