KidZania: children to take over new 'mini-city' in London

A new kind of theme park is coming to London where children can pretend to work in adult jobs, from firefighters and doctors to chocolatiers and pilots.

KidZania, a 75,000sq ft mini-city for children aged four to 14, is currently being built at Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd's Bush.

The £20m park has its own town square, hospital, sports stadium, theatre, university, newspaper and moving vehicles, with a capacity for 1,800 children a day. Entry will cost up to £28 and adults are restricted to certain areas.

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Children are given 50 KidZos, the park's currency, at the beginning of their four-hour visit and are invited to open their own bank account. They can earn more money by getting one of the many jobs in the city, ranging from firefighters, actors and chocolatiers to doctors, housekeepers and fashion designers. There is even a fake tattoo parlour.

It is the 19th KidZania branch to open worldwide after Xavier Lopez Ancona, a Mexican entrepreneur, came up with the idea in 1999.

Children can spend their cash on manicures or small items such as pens and sweets. The more they work, the more they receive and if they want to increase their wages they can enrol at university.

Stuart Jeffries at The Guardian says it is certainly a "game-changer" for children's entertainment, as well as for education – although he can't help thinking it is "what you'd get if work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith was put in charge of Alton Towers".

Jeffries does, however, question whether it is also a way for big business to "get its claws" into its customers of the future. Young visitors can learn to fly a BA plane, post letters as DHL drivers, make Innocent smoothies and change tyres at the Renault engineering centre. "Children: not so much little dudes as money-making opportunities," says Jeffries.

KidZania claims it needs the real names to "authenticate the content", but Gillian Orr at The Independent has similar reservations. "The amount of branding on display makes Formula One look subtle," she says. "That said, what a bloody lot of fun it looks. The ten-year-old me would have chosen this over Disneyland any day."

Orr says the biggest problem that she can see is how to ensure the children will spread out across the whole city. "After all, when they have the opportunity to do flight simulation in the cockpit of a life-size British Airways plane, who's going to want to learn about housekeeping with boring old Dorsett Hotels?"