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

 
Axl Rose has been working on the new Guns N’ Roses album, Chinese Democracy, since 1994.  It’s been supposedly ready for release for many years, but legal problems have kept the album delayed.  It’s missed release date after release date.  The band has toured to drum up interest in the album, but the album hasn’t […]

The Simpsons, now tied with Gunsmoke for the longest-running prime time program in American history, has had an incredible impact on popular culture.  They’ve been on every kind of promotional piece of merchandise ever made, have had a hit movie, and have not one, but two words in the dictionary.  D’oh made the cut and […]

Remember Thomas Beatie?  He made a splash everywhere when he announced that, despite having become a man via sex change, he was legitimately pregnant.  Well, the pregnant man is back, and he’s pregnant again.
After Beatie gave birth to his daughter Susan on June 29, Thomas never resumed the male hormone treatments that turned him from […]

Google is just an unstoppable octopus of helpfulness these days.  If you’re a webmaster, you know all about Google Analytics, which tracks your website’s performance, and Google Trends, which tracks general internet things of interest.  There’s also Google’s advertising network AdSense, the Google Android smart phone OS, the Google Chrome web browser, and all the […]

It’s a special day today for a lot of my good friends who are members of an elite wing of the United States Armed Forces.  That’s right, leathernecks, it’s time to wish happy birthday to the United States Marine Corps!  Oorah, devildogs!
There is no branch of the service that commands the loyalty and respect that […]

Miss Cellania asks:  “To drink or not to drink?”  That is question.  Coffee has a lot of potential health benefits for those of us who indulge in a bit of the black brew from time to time, but it also has a lot of potential health risks associated with its consumption.  The wise owls over […]

Sad news for me today, gang.  Best-selling science fiction author and medical doctor Michael Crichton passed away today after a private struggle with cancer.  He was only 66 years old, but he leaves behind a body of work that is as good as anyone’s in his genre.  His books, usually a blend of action and […]