People seeing the upcoming "Noah" film may be able to reenact their own scenes in just two years. The people behind the Creation Museum in Kentucky are fundraising to build a biblical theme park centered on a 510-foot replica of Noah's Ark, the Courier-Journal reported.
"We're going to begin construction, and this is going to be great for the area," Ken Ham, president of Answers in Genesis, said in an online announcement Thursday night. "Let's build the ark."
Some $14.4 million in private donations has reportedly been raised to create the Ark Encounter theme park on the 800-acre site, which is in Grant Country, Ky. Just the ark will cost around $24.5 million to replicate, while the entire park is expected to have a price tag of more than $120 million.
"God has burdened AiG to rebuild a full-size Noah's Ark," Ham wrote on his website.
Other elements planned for the park, which will be built about 40 miles from the Petersburg, Ky., Creation Museum, include "a pre-flood themed area, live animal shows and a Tower of Babel featuring a special-effects theater and a 1st-century village," according to the Courier-Journal.
Officials have said that most of the $62 million in municipal bonds offered to investors have been sold, enabling them to start the project, which should begin construction in May.
The three-story ark will be the largest timber-frame structure in the country when it's completed, according to Ham, who also made headlines recently for his origins debate against Bill Nye the Science Guy.
The project has drawn mixed responses, with local officials calling the ark good news for the Northern Kentucky economy, while critics have objected to the biblical tenets involved.
"We're happy to be the home of the ark," Williamstown Mayor Rick Skinner said, as reported by the Courier-Journal. He noted that the park will likely bring in hundreds of jobs as well as hotels and restaurants to the mostly rural community.
On the other hand, people like Josh Rosenau, policy director for the California-based National Center for Science Education, have raised objections to the park's representation of history and science.
The theme park gives "a false account of world history and biology" presenting the biblical account "as if it were fact," Rosenau said.
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