An entire world has been at a standstill for almost half a year now. Since then, Miniatur Wunderland has been closed and Germany’s most popular attraction has been without a single visitor. You might think that the trains of the largest model railroad layout have been languishing in the sidings ever since, the layout waiting in hibernation under cloths for better times and the standstill is being managed bleakly.
The opposite is the case. Despite 1,000,000 fewer guests in 2020 and the most difficult time since the company was founded, the focus is on the future. “When we saw the second lockdown coming in October, we immediately decided to see it as an unexpected opportunity to tackle all the work and projects that would not have been possible with visitors,” explains Frederik Braun, adding: “but to be honest, we had hoped that we would be able to reopen towards Easter.”
Accordingly, the list of projects became shorter and shorter with each week of lockdown and the response on social media grew ever greater. The weekly lockdown update videos have already been viewed millions of times. But then all the critical projects were completed and what remained were a few creative whims, in particular the idea for a highly complex world record. “At the end of February, we were faced with the choice of either hoping for better times or realizing a crazy idea that was only possible at all during lockdown – but which entailed sleepless nights and a lot of work. We honestly didn’t hesitate for a minute,” recalls Frederik Braun.
The inspiration for this was a video from the year before last. An A380 takes off in Wonderland, on the wing a Santa Claus with a bat in his hand, hitting bottles filled with water and playing the melody of Jingle Bells. This short video went around the world and was viewed around 100,000,000 times. This gave rise to the idea of having a train travel through the whole of Wonderland, playing a medley of the world’s most famous classical pieces. “If there hadn’t been a lockdown, we would have only thought about the project for a minute and then buried it as impossible. But the whole team was in the mood to try the impossible”.
So Guinness was called and on the very same day, Team von Wunderländer took on this mammoth task. After almost a month of experiments, sleepless nights and a number of setbacks, the goal was finally reached at the end of March.
A route with thousands of differently filled jars from Scandinavia to Italy was completed. In the presence of the Guinness Word RecordsTM witnesses, the world record was attempted and achieved on the first attempt. The result is a unique video that can be seen worldwide from Easter Monday.
“I am incredibly proud of this record and this wonderful video. But even happier and more important for me personally are the realizations of the last few weeks. As a team, despite social distancing rules and physical distance, we were closer than ever and together we achieved something that was thought to be impossible. That gives me a lot of courage and makes me look forward to the next few weeks,” concludes Frederik Braun.
You can find the video here:
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