Watch out Walt, here comes Shakespeare's World

Move over Walt Disney. A British entrepreneur thinks he has found a storyteller capable of challenging the creator of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck as undisputed king of the theme park – William Shakespeare.

Work is about to start on "Shakespeare's World", the first of four planned full-size replicas of Stratford-upon-Avon and London as they would have looked, sounded and smelled in the Bard's era.

Businessman Kris Kliszewicz's proposal to build one of a series of walk-through "visitor experience centres" framed around the life of the world's most famous playwright has been crawling through the planning process in England for 13 years. But his dream will be realised first in the US. By the end of the year, thousands of tonnes of "authentic" oak timbers and wattle and daub will have been shipped to Midland, near Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, after local authorities approved the construction of a £200m attraction.

Former film financier Kris Kliszewicz, 41, himself a resident of Stratford, hopes to open three more identical parks: in Stratford, Russia and China. He said: "It started when I was looking for a suitable subject for a movie a few years ago, and Shakespeare's life cropped up. I thought, 'if we're going to try and do that we'll have to build the setting first'.

"By having a setting that works as a theme park but is also wholly authentic, you get something that doubles as a tourist attraction and a film set that allows you artistic control you would never get from a Hollywood studio."

However, Mr Kliszewicz is adamant that Shakespeare's World will be bereft of at least one of Disneyland's staples. "There will be no roller-coasters or anything like that," he said.

A spokesman for the RSC, whose own plans to build a £100m "Shakespeare village" in Stratford have been criticised, said: "We were approached some time ago to become a partner in this project, but we made it quite clear that it wasn't appropriate for us."