A Journey through Patagonia at Miniatur Wunderland

(eap) After four years of elaborate detail work on two continents with more than 50,000 working hours and almost two million Euro construction costs, the new Patagonia section in Miniatur Wunderland Hamburg was opened today. The 65-square-metre miniature scenery complements the neighbouring “Rio de Janeiro” section in the South America World in the new warehouse building and invites visitors to one of Germany’s most popular attractions to marvel at replicated landscapes and natural phenomena.

“I personally had the great fortune to travel to Patagonia almost 20 years ago. This breathtaking and beautiful nature has never left my mind. The endless vastness make you feel very small as a human being. Since then, I have always dreamed of having Patagonia in Wonderland one day. Now it is reality and the almost impossible has been achieved. We have been able to capture the beauty and vastness of this landscape on these 65 square metres,” says Wunderland founder Frederik Braun.

With the new section, the team has scaled new heights of model-making art and technology. Among the highlights of the Patagonia scenery is the infamous Drake Passage, a strait between Antarctica and Cape Horn known for extreme swells that have brought many sailors to their limits or even to their end... These forces of nature are impressively staged with the help of complex wave mechanics and visual projections. In addition, not only day and night are simulated by an appropriate play of light, but also a threatening thunderstorm. A feeling of cold, on the other hand, may arise at the sight of the replica of the famous Perito Moreno glacier. Every few minutes, complex technology causes blocks of ice to crash into the water, and water effects are also used. In the background, the imposing replica of the Fitz Roy mountain peak from Argentina’s Los Glaciares National Park rises into the air. All in all, the entire mechanics of the new Patagonia section contains the most technical components ever installed in a Miniatur Wunderland theme section.

“Perhaps precisely because this vastness of the landscape triggers a certain feeling, Patagonia is a single work of art for me. With the new technologies in place here, the attention to detail and boundless creativity, the team has outdone itself again and it just makes me happy to stand here and admire the result together with everyone once again. In the last decades, in which we have reinvented ourselves again and again, this opening does not leave me cold either. Quite the opposite,” says Wunderland founder Gerrit Braun.

The next new miniature world sections to follow will be the rainforest with the Amazon and the Andes at the turn of the year 2024/2025 and the Caribbean in 2025/2026. Parts of Asia are already planned for the time after. ■