I haven't seen it outside the box, but I've read some comments on it - and I'm afraid they're pretty discouraging. It seems that the hull and just about all the other major features of the kit are badly out of proportion. Some people have suggested that it resembles the United States's smaller - and much older - near-sister, the America, more closely - but it doesn't really look much like that ship either.
The Glencoe kit is, of course, a reissue of an extremely old kit that originated with ITC (Ideal Toy Corporation) back in the early fifties. I suspect part of the problem is that no good plans of the real ship were available at that time. She was built under a Navy subsidy (with the understanding that she'd be turned into a high-speed troop transport in wartime), and her hull lines remained classified for a long time.
To my knowledge only one other plastic United States kit has ever been produced: the 1/602-scale Revell one, originally issued in 1955. (The scale and date are from Dr. Graham's fine book, Remembering Revell Model Kits.) Revell obviously had the same problem with sources; the real ship was brand new at that time. (I've often wondered whether the odd, semi-waterline configuration of several first-generation Revell ship kits can be explained by the fact that the designers didn't know what the underwater hulls looked like.) By 1955 standards that Revell kit represented the state of the art, but it's difficult to take seriously as a scale model by modern standards.
The ocean liner is one of the most grievously neglected of subjects in the world of plastic modeling. The entire range of decent plastic ocean liner kits can almost be counted on one's fingers and toes.
Does anybody out there happen to know what the current status of, and plans for, the poor old United States are? I saw her, looking extremely dilapidated and rusty, as my wife and I were passing through Philadelphia last summer.
Youth, talent, hard work, and enthusiasm are no match for old age and treachery.