We're all going to the zoo tomorrow...

Dear Congressman,

My ventures over the world wide web yesterday led to a pit stop at an article on unusual ideas for theme parks around the world. It was too good not to share. (kudos to Money Watch for the link)

Parque EcoAlberto, El Alberto, Mexico

Offers visitors an experience they may never forget: a simulated illegal U.S.-Mexico border crossing. For entry fees of around $20, visitors have the pleasure of being blindfolded and surrounded by the sound of dogs and sirens. And instead of park employees dressed as Mickey Mouse and Snow White? They get angry border patrol guards and violent drug smugglers. Fake ones, of course. 

And here we are thinking Americans are the only nationality who have mastered bad taste. Well played Mexico... well played.

Proposed theme park, Abbottabad, Pakistan

The neighborhood where the world’s most notorious and wanted terrorist spent his final days has been tapped as the location for a new $30 million amusement park. “We have enough space now where bin Laden’s compound was demolished,” Jamaluddin Khan, the deputy provincial minister for tourism, recently told Reuters. The theme park, which would take at least five years to complete, will be part of a 50-acre riverside development in Abbottabad that includes a zoo, water sports, rock climbing and paragliding. “Local people are going to go to that area out of curiosity, so why not give them something to see?” says travel expert and consumer advocate Christopher Elliott. Plus, it could bring some much needed money to the local economy.

If it has a fun house, I would not advise entering it.

Holy Land Experience, Orlando, Fla.

This theme park offers recreations from the Garden of Eden, Jerusalem street markets and... wait for it...  the live crucifixion of Jesus Christ with a wailing actor playing the title role covered in fake blood. “For a lot of people, it’s a spiritual experience. For visitors who are not evangelical, parts of it may be disturbing,”

Why stop there? I would have Sunday night stonings and a Christian v lion fest every other day.

Stalin World, Druskininkai, Lithuania

No one gets sent to the gulag at Stalin World, a 500-acre theme park featuring the former Soviet dictator. Officially named Grutas Park, the grounds include watch towers and barbed wire fences. On a less oppressive note, Stalin World also features a small zoo and a playground for children called Luna Park. According to the park’s website, its mission is to educate people about Soviet history and to take “the ‘idols’ off the pedestal.” 

If you buy the VIP package, you get fed caviar and treated like royalty. If you buy the regular admission, you are starved and watched closely by large stern faced women in uniform.. On the downside, one of every three people who purchase the VIP package are shot at random.

Love Land, Jeju Island, South Korea

This erotic theme park is strictly adults-only. Opened in 2004 on Jeju Island in South Korea, Love Landfeatures 140 sculptures of erotic art. They come in the form of phallic symbols, and they illustrate various acts of romantic entanglement.  

No wonder North Korea still wants to invade!

Dickens World, Kent, England

Opened in 2007, this venue is based in Chatham Dockyard in Kent, close to where Charles Dickens — who wrote such classics as “A Christmas Carol” and “David Copperfield” — lived as a child. Dickens World is housed inside a large warehouse with a Victorian classroom, an interactive haunted house, a “Great Expectations” boat ride through a re-creation of the old sewers of London, and a “Fagin’s Den” playground for children named after the villain and corrupter of youth from “Oliver Twist.” 

I bet this one has Disney nervous!  Hopefully they have not made too much of a life-like recreation of the Victorian sewer system.