Dickens World builders have great expectations

CHATHAM, England – In Dickens World, rat catchers hunt vermin on London’s cobbled streets, pickpockets roam the alleys – and visitors line up for a fun-tastic water ride.

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.

Literary purists may balk, but the attraction’s backers are confident.

“Would Dickens approve? Yes,” said Thelma Grove of the Dickens Fellowship, a global association. “He loved to see people enjoy themselves, and he had a very sharp eye for the latest fad.”

In more than a dozen sprawling novels, including “The Pickwick Papers” and “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” Dickens created a rich tapestry of 19th-century England, peopled by struggling workers, aspiring clerks, jaded lawyers, ambitious orphans, rogues, runaways and thieves. Still in print after more than a century, the books have inspired numerous film and TV adaptations and a popular musical, “Oliver!”

Dickens World’s backers say they are trying to capture that vibrant landscape in their $125 million theme park. They insist it is “based on a credible and factual account of Charles Dickens’ works and the world in which he lived.”

“You can’t Disney-fy Dickens,” said managing director Kevin Christie, “because he was better and he was first.”

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 Ebenezer 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 after the gangmaster of the band of thieves in “Oliver Twist.”

There may be a whiff of kitsch in the air at Dickens World, but its supporters include some serious Dickens buffs.

“It’s like a dream come true,” said Grove, who acted as an adviser on the project.

She helped ensure that everything from the names on the faux shopfronts to the pharmacy offering “syrup of squirrels” was true to the Victorian period.

As journalists toured the site Wednesday, hard-hatted construction workers unfurled a banner featuring a Victorian skyline across the front of the hangarlike building in Chatham, 35 miles southeast of London.

Promotional literature for Dickens World promises the “sounds and smells” of the 19th century. For now it sounds like a construction site and smells of sawdust and fresh paint.

“It’s going to be a few weeks, but you can see we’re getting there,” Christie said.