Miniatur Wunderland - Hamburg
First published in 2020
After we have locked up our bags, we start our tour. But, we do not get far. The Wunderland has installed a large 3D scanner and since not much is going on yet, we are intercepted there right away. Individually and together we stand in a cabin and the scanner drives around us. The resulting photos can later be integrated into virtual Wunderland sceneries and if you like you can also order figures.
Spread over two floors, there are about 9 different sceneries, depending on how you count.
We start with the USA. There's so much to discover. Of course, it helps that we have been to the US a few times. But you might know a lot of things from television as well. And many small motifs don't even need a template.
There are crashing airplanes whose crews save themselves with parachutes, posing tourists and cliff jumpers. Underneath Area 51 you can see aliens and the spaceship from Independence Day. By means of pushbuttons, individual motifs can be additionally animated and of course, they are almost always in operation.
With the music of Peter and the Wolf, we stay here for some day and night cycles. But when Freya asks Jürgen later if the constantly same music didn't annoy him, he totally blanked it out. Freya, on the other hand, totally got nuts.
The museum is classified as model railroads and as such it’s also the largest in the world. But much more interesting are the cars and other vehicles. While the trains run on the tracks and maybe stop once in a while, the cars have a greater degree of freedom. With them, you can tell little stories much better.
Before we finally leave the USA, we take a breakfast break in the museum's restaurant. Not so much because we are so hungry, but to get rid of the information overload.
During the following scenes, Freya pushes for a slightly higher speed, but at some point, she has had enough. While Jürgen goes through the rest of the facility at a "fast pace", she slips away to the restaurant.
The richness of detail continues in the other scenes and is also developed further over time. So you find Greta Thunberg together with her SUV on an ice floe, the Millennium Falcon at the airport, or the Papamobile, which is being tuned by monks.
No wonder that the Wunderland is the German attraction with the most visitors - even before Neuschwanstein Castle. Tickets should definitely be bought on the Internet. Theoretically, there are also tickets on-site, but the waiting times are in the range of two hours.
From 8:30 to 14:30 we are here and would certainly need 4-5 additional visits until we would have seen halfway everything.
