Balance sheet from 16 August 2001 – 15 August 2004
Three years of Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg. That’s three years full of fun, excitement, anecdotes and obstacles. What began as a crazy idea in July 2000 has now become Hamburg’s most successful tourist attraction. More visitors than the musical The Lion King – if only someone had told us that beforehand…
Not everything always worked straight away. For example, the unique car system. Our own development, the cars that move as if by magic, are the attraction. But just two days before the opening, hardly anyone would have bet that almost everything would work on 16 August 2001 in front of the then first mayor, Ortwin Runde. Well, at least almost everything. Because the things that the visitors couldn’t see were happening underneath the facility. Throughout the entire opening day, around 20 employees were underneath the installation to find the many small errors that had sneaked in during the hectic rush of the previous nights.
But that’s exactly what people want to see. Trains regularly crash into each other here. So when our red-faced team rebuilds two ICE trains that have crashed into each other, you can see the glee on the faces of the visitors :-)! A highlight are the workplaces of our modellers, which are open to visitors. Every visitor can watch the modellers at work. The new construction section will of course be built completely in front of the eyes of the visitors.
It looks like something from NASA
This expression is from an American forum. There, American model railway fans were discussing the large control centre with over 100 computers and monitors. After about a year of running, we had to do something. Operating the system was becoming increasingly complex. So we decided to centralise all the computers into one control station. What was planned for us became another attraction for the visitors.
Michael Stich, Olli Dietrich and Wladimir Klitschko are just some of the many famous guests who were fascinated by the thousands of funny, sad and sometimes shocking details. Other VIPs: Eva Hermann, Jörg Pilawa, Helmut Zierl, Roger Willemsen, Stephan Schwartz, Oliver Reck, Martin Pickenhagen, Rudolfo Esteban Cardoso and many more…
In the beginning, we started with 20 employees from ‘nothing’. It became more and more. Miniatur Wunderland now employs over 100 people. Within three years, good craftsmen have become fantastic artists who get up every morning with a new vision. Visions that make a visit to Miniatur Wunderland so enjoyable that a survey of over 10,000 Miniatur Wunderland guests revealed that 98.6% would recommend us to others and as many as 19 out of 20 guests want to visit us again soon, even though the average visitor lives over 400 kilometres away from us.
STATISTIC
Visitors until 15 August 2004: over 1,400,000
of which children: over 500,000
MiWuLa-days: 45,258 (Duration of 15 minutes each)
Open hours: 10,165
Total kilometres travelled by trains: 110 times around the world! Hard to believe, but
true! The average hour achieved a
mileage of 41.93 km; 10.165 opening
hours = over 420,000 km
Total kilometres travelled by the cars: 111,000 km
Train accidents: approx. 50,000
Fire department operations: 61,552 services by the MiWuLa-fire service (THE highlight here)
Total on/off of lights: 14,728,455,302 (almost 10 billion…) Each light
has a counter in the computer. While a
normal street lamp is not
switched on that often, a blue light, for example,
counts really frequently, as our computer counts each flash as
a single ‘on’.
Electricity consumption: System: 400,000 kilowatt hours per year
Total: almost 1,000,000 kWh per year
Visitors on the homepage: over 2,500,000
Page Impression: over 50,000,000
Miniatur Wunderland population statistics
Population on 16 August 2001: 30,582 (average height 2.2 cm)
Population on 16 August 2004: 65,000
Growth rate: over 100%
Immigration: over 34.000
Migrations: 4,209 of which 1,721 deceased (hoover victims) and 2,488
missing persons (abducted by children)
Queue supervision
(all free of charge to shorten the time in your head and keep the little ones entertained)
Cola, Fanta, water: 750,000 cups
Cocoa: 15,000 litres
Mini Milk ice cream: 140,000 units
Muled wine: 14,000 litres
Sweets: 11,000,000 pieces
