Rats, Pickpockets, Fog - It's Dickens World!

[ALIASd]

Rats, Pickpockets, Fog—It’s Dickens World!

The gloomy charms of Dickens World.


Web Exclusive Commentary
By Alison Moodie
Newsweek
Updated: 3:20 p.m. PT June 13, 2007

June 13, 2007 - A theme-park ride through a dank sewer? Dickens brought to life in 21st-century England? This I have to see. “All ready, sweetheart?” asks the woman helping me onto the boat, dressed as a peasant in a white smocked dress and cheesecloth cap. Before I get the chance to answer, I’m sent off on my own into the darkness. As the boat is carried along by the current, I spy a few animatronic rats amid the sludge. It’s all rather eerie, especially since I’m alone, and I’m relieved when the boat rises out the river and I find myself flying above the rooftops of Victorian London. There are church steeples, shops, houses and even a mock-up of St. Paul’s Cathedral, with lanterns casting a glow that’s decidedly cheerier than the sewer’s gloom. But it turns dark again and the boat is now heading for a steep drop. I brace myself for the inevitable splash to come. But nothing happens. The boat comes to a halt, and all I can see is the creepy silhouette of what I hope is a dummy, and not a man, in front of me. Five minutes go by. Five minutes in which I’m alone in a boat in a ride in a theme park. Just when I start to get nervous, I am suddenly rudely jolted from 19th-century England into the present day by a guard with a blinding flashlight. “We’re terribly sorry, ma’am, but the ride is encountering some problems at the moment. We’ll buy you some coffee, and it’ll be up and running again in no time.”

Photo gallery and full article at:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19211348/site/newsweek/