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The Dickens theme park: Please sirs, can we have less?

The Guardian reports that a theme park based on the works of Charles Dickens is scheduled to open in Kent, England at the end of May. The £62-million project is located in a huge hangar adjacent to a multiplex cinema and a retail factory outlet.

[I]t’s a day out for the family that brings to life the 15 novels by Charles Dickens; actually make that 13 – they haven’t managed to squeeze in Barnaby Rudge or Bleak House. Never mind that the books tackle child exploitation, poverty, murder and domestic violence; the indoor attraction is based on designs by the creator of Santa World in Sweden so the emphasis is firmly on fun, fun, fun.

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The centrepiece is a boat ride which, loosely speaking, is Great Expectations presented as a log flume. It’s the longest of its kind in Europe. I found it fairly hard going but then I did wade through it in wellington boots several sizes too big on a day when it had sprung a leak. Builders were busy draining all 210 metres of it. Where’s Brunel when you need him? I imagine it’s a more leisurely affair in a boat, which will travel through a Victorian sewer, past a graveyard and on to a crypt showcasing a greatest hits of Dickensian villains.

And if the report about it is skeptical, The Guardian blogger is downright hostile: “It’s enough to make you spit. It’s certainly beyond parody (although that doesn’t mean I’m not going to try).”

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