A Charles Dickens Theme Park?

I've mentioned my Britgirl pal Therisa Barber on several occasions on this blog, and now I have more reason to do so. Her hometown is suddenly a center of attention!

Therisa comes from Chatham, England, a town famous for naval docks established in the Elizabethan age that operated continuously for nearly four hundred years. Well, it seems the town is capitalizing on another bit of history. Charles Dickens lived there as a boy while his father worked at the Chatham docks. So they're turning his boyhood home into a national historic site? Eh, not quite.

The town is transforming a 70,000-square-foot warehouse into "Dickens World," a theme park where scenes from Dickens's novels are recreated. Also included are - wait for it! - actors playing Dickens characters, a flume ride through a tableau of Victorian London, and a four-dimensional animatronic theatrical presentation of Dickens's life and work - basically a robot revue in which Scrooge and David Copperfield hobnob with Mr. Sleary and Charles Darnay, I assume.

My Anglophilia has been somewhat compromised. See, I always thought the Brits didn't go in for that kitschy, Disney-style, American show business claptrap, and here's a bunch of nimrods trivializing their country's literary heritage. When Disney wanted to build an historical theme park in Virginia (thankfully, never realized), I wasn't really surprised because, well, this is America. But the British building a literary theme park? And a literary theme park celebrating one of the most esteemed social commentarians of the nineteenth century? Uh, gentlemen, could I please see you in my office? Look, if I want to go to a theme park and find out about what's like to live as a member of the working poor, I'll go to Disney World and ask the counterpeople at the snack bars!

Anyway, for those who care, you can find out more about Dickens World here. I can only wonder what Therisa thinks of all this, but I now have another reason to hope she makes it as a famous dancer. That way, her hometown will have something they can really be proud of. :-)