Travel plan idea blog

Harry Potter theme park, Charles Dickens theme park, religious theme parks, and your ideas

If you have been to Disney World, Universal Studios and Disneyland and are looking for something a little bit different, some interesting new theme parks have been in the news recently.

A theme park called the Wizarding World of Harry Potter will open in 2009 at the Universal Orlando Resort in Florida. The 20 acre park will feature rides and attractions based on the films, rather than the books and initial designs have apparently been approved by JK Rowling, the author of the hugely successful books.

I can imagine a Harry Potter theme park being successful – the books have sold an estimated 325 million copies around the world, and the movies have earned more than $3.5 billion at the cinema.

But I’m not so sure about this next park. A theme park that’s just opened in the UK is based on the novels of one of England’s most famous authors – Charles Dickens. Dickens wrote mostly about squalor, poverty and hardship in Victorian England – subjects that perhaps don’t immediately seem to lend themselves to a theme park.

But Dickens World, built at a cost of around $120 million, on a disused dock close to the town of Chatham, is expected to attract 300,000 visitors a year. The attractions at the park include a recreated jail, a schoolhouse and Ebenezer Scrooge’s haunted house. But the biggest attraction promises to be a boat ride through a recreation of the London sewers.

Religion doesn’t seem to be an obvious subject for a theme park, either. But plans have just been announced for a 25 acre theme park in Northern India, which will "recreate great moments in Hindu mythology" with a mixture of rides, museums, shows and other features. Vietnam already has a Buddhist themed park which, rather ambitiously I think, offers a recreation of heaven on earth as one of its attractions.

Religious theme parks are nothing new – Florida already boasts the Holy Land Experience and several other religious themed parks are being planned or have just opened. In Tennessee, Bible Park USA is in the works, costing $200 million and another religious theme park is proposed for Mesquite, Nevada – some 80 miles from Las Vegas.

A $27 million “Creation” museum opened in May 2007 near Cincinnati, telling the story of creation from the Biblical viewpoint, as opposed to a scientific one. Not surprisingly, the museum attracted thousands of protesters outside its gates – almost as many as the 4000 visitors who went inside on opening day.

I had no idea there were so many theme parks until I started to research this article. Personally speaking, I would be interested in seeing a James Bond themed park. Does anyone else have any other offbeat ideas for theme parks? Or has anyone visited an unusual one?

Guest entry by Mancunian

Posted by James Trotta at June 3, 2007 12:27 PM | TrackBack