Ask a follower of Sherlock Holmes what they would do with billions of dollars and you’ll get a lot of responses. Some will talk of buying Doyle manuscripts and first editions. Some will imagine flying to every Sherlock Holmes society dinner, symposium, and club meeting they could. As for me, my first thought has always been “amusement park.” Crazy? Juvenile? Tell that to the people that are opening “Dickens World” in Chatham, England.

An amusement park based on the novels of Charles Dickens, Dickens World allows one to “see the Ghost of Christmas Past in Ebenezer Scrooge’s haunted house, be hectored by a schoolmaster at Dotheboy’s Hall . . . and peer into the fetid cells of notorious Newgate Prison,” according to a travel article that appeared recently. Reading that piece, I couldn’t help but remember my long-time dream of a Holmes amusement park and think, why not?

The world of Sherlock Holmes had its Dartmoor Prison, its Priory School, its ghostly Hound from Hell . . . in fact, I suspect Sherlock Holmes would make a better theme for a true amusement park. The builders of the Dickens park seem to be going overboard saying that they’re not going to “Disney-fy” Dickens, which I don’t think gives enough credit to Disney. The “imagineers” there have an astounding attention to detail in their work and decades of experience making dreams come true for as many people as they can get in the gates. And people like a good roller coaster . . . so what’s wrong with a good roller coaster where you get chased by an animatronic Hound of the Baskervilles?

And think about this: Disney (both Land and World) made people think that Mickey Mouse was an important cartoon character. Think about it, who would give a care about that bland rodent in this day and age if not for his being mascot of the best amusement park in the world? When’s the last time he had a watchable cartoon out? Mickey owes his continuing presence in our culture to amusement parks. Could it do any harm to let Sherlock Holmes get some of that mojo? Or do we think that a biannual remake of The Hound of the Baskervilles for some cable channel is going to be all the PR he needs?

Conan Doyle had a glorious imagination, and to let its prose creations take on a tourist-ready reality would be a thing to behold. Just imagine going into Jabez Wilson’s pawn shop, then getting to sneak through the tunnel (built big enough to walk through this time!) into a bank vault full of fake French gold, where you can play a rubber of whist with Mr. Merryweather. Or getting to see the cheetah and orangutan at Stoke Moran, after passing the gypsy caravan hawking souvenirs, and then making your way into the bedroom to await the slither of a swamp adder.

Ride cobblestone streets in a real hansom cab. Take in a show at the Lyceum, which might bring dancer Flora Millar, violinest Wilhelmina Norman-Neruda, and contralto Irene Adler on to the same stage. A water ride on the Thames River at the amusement park might be a little wilder than the one Holmes and Watson took in Sign of the Four, but Tonga’s blow gun shooting a sudden burst of water might be just as worrisome as poison darts to anyone who had spent the morning fixing their hair!

Jephro Rucastle’s comedy club. Reichenbach Falls water slide. Madame Tussaud’s wax museum (well, that one already exists with outlets in places like Vegas, so why not?). An Underground ride that actually takes you through the London criminal underworld. The Radix Pedis Diaboli house of madness that leads inevitably to Helston Asylum. Murder mystery dinners every night, and educational features on everything from Phoenician tin traders to the obliquity of the ecliptic.

In fact, the more I think about it, Holmes World seems much more like amusement park material than Dickens ever could be. Holmes had his street urchins and old misers, too, let us not forget . . . and a lot more action.

Dickens World is set to open May 25. Lets hope that the date for opening a “Holmes World” isn’t too far past our lifetimes.

Your humble correspondent,

Brad Keefauver