Collideoscope

Dickens World theme park is opening in England next month and it looks really cool! Anyone that has ever read any of Chuck's stuff (okay okay that's a little profane) should find it decidedly fascinating that such a theme park has been conceptualized, built, and now about to open.

A new theme park inspired by the work of Charles Dickens aims to transform a 70,000-square-foot warehouse near London into a teeming — and family-friendly — corner of Victorian England.

The indoor attraction includes a central square of cobbled streets and crooked buildings, where staff dressed as pickpockets and wenches will mingle with the crowds. Visitors who pay the $25 admission charge — $15 for children — will have the chance to see the Ghost of Christmas Past in Ebeneezer Scrooge's haunted house, be hectored by a schoolmaster at Dotheboys Hall — the dismal school from "Nicholas Nickleby" — and peer into the fetid cells of notorious Newgate Prison.

Tourists can also have a meal in the cafeteria, which has resisted the temptation to offer "Please, sir can I have some more?" 2-for-1 specials. The little ones can play in Fagin's Den, an area for preschoolers named — alarmingly, some might think — after the gangmaster of the band of thieves in "Oliver Twist."

The official website is here.