IN A WORD NO!
I have to weigh in on this one. Back in 1998 I was contacted by Minicraft to give a report on the "new" academy 1/400th RMS Titanic. Academy panographed and simply copied the original 1/350th. scale Titanic made by Minicraft. Several other "Titanic" modelers were also contacted to give a report.
Academy simply copied the old minicraft and scaled it down. They copied it so well, that they copied ALL the mistakes in the 1/350th. version. Example 16 port holes on the Starboard bow, and 15 on the Port side, etc.. The list was almost endless. I wrote a report and it was used in a federal copyright case where Minicraft won an injunction from for the Courts to keep Academy from importing the model for 2 years. (They imported it anyway.)
MInicraft paid me for the report and was good enough to list my name in the instruction manual with the other modelrs (which to me was worth more than money).
To this day I will not buy an Academy kit, God only knows who they copied next, all they do is copy, So I don't know what the deal is, your getting a copy of a kit with mistakes and a wood deck.
Jacob B. Groby III