Opens: Friday 25th May 2007
| Dickens World Facts | - Costs: £12.50 for adults | £7.50 for children | £10.50 concessions
- Open every day from 10am until 7pm
- The opening of Dickens World was delayed 6 weeks
- It is hoped the theme park will attract 300,000 visitors a year
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Housed in a modern, aluminium-clad hangar on the Chatham Maritime estate in Kent, the creators of Dickens World promise a flavour of "dark, smoky, moody London, full of smells and mist". Visitors to the £62m, privately-funded attraction can sample the Great Expectations boat ride, themed around the escape of the convict Magwitch and featuring dyed-brown water.  | | Will it sink or swim? |
There's the Haunted House of Ebenezer Scrooge, Quilps Creek, Newgate Prison and the Britannia Music Hall, while children can sit in the Dotheboys Hall Victorian classroom and be shouted at by an angry beak. And if you tire of the world of debtors' prisons and runaway prisoners, you can always pop next door to the Odeon multiplex. Dickens spent part of his childhood in Chatham, while his father worked as a clerk in the Navy pay office at the dockyard. Nearby Rochester has always made hay of its Dickens connections. The man himself referred to his childhood stamping grounds as Dullborough.
 | | Just like the real thing? |
Those that fancy a drink in Dickens World can sup at the Six Jolly Fellowship Porters bar. Gruel will not feature. | 
