Spring break is right around the corner and if you’ve been tiring of the same boring beaches in Cancun, then hold off on booking your plane ticket for just a minute.

If it’s a bizarre or educational vacation you want, then check out this list published by Mental Floss of “8 Weird Theme Parks We’d Be Willing to Wait in Line For.”

The list kicks off with the Ocean Dome located in Miyazaki, Japan. Essentially, this park is a giant, manmade indoor beach with a retractable roof for pleasant weather. This is beyond the scope of any wave pool at Six Flags or Kings Dominion. This pool, if we can still call it that, holds 13,500 tons of water. Seems like an oasis in the middle of an overdeveloped urban area, correct? Not quite. The Ocean Dome is located a mere 1,000 feet from a real beach. With real waves.

The other parks featured on the list are just as weird–hence the title. And some of them don’t even exist yet, including Dracula Land and a video game park.

Coming in at number three on the list is the Nintendo Amusement Park, which is neither affiliated with Nintendo nor is it a park. The makers of this would-be theme park have created a video, which you can view below, of their crane-operated ride and costume combination that would allow visitors to engage in the world of the Super Mario Brothers themselves. These guys have got the details covered all the way from giant stuffed mushrooms to golden balloons the player must pop to accumulate coins. If only this thing was more than just a prototype.

But the people over at Mental Floss save the best, and my personal favorite, for last: Dickens World (Chatham, England). The Mental Floss description left quite a lot to be desired, but when I ventured out on my own I discovered that this theme park is actually a recreation of Victorian England as depicted in Charles Dickens’ novels. Some of the exhibits include Great Expectations Boat Ride and the School Room, which must illustrate the pitiful education system Dickens wrote about in Hard Times. The full name of the park is Dickens World Educational Area, and it is used most often as a place for British school children to experience their history lessons firsthand. But feel free to throw birthday parties there, as well.

For more on weird amusement parks, read the full list at MentalFloss.com.

Image: SkyScraperCity

Tags: Ocean Dome, amusement parks, theme parks, Dickens World, Mental Floss, weird, spring break alternatives

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