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A map of Miniatur Wonderland enables fast overview and navigation (bit.ly/1J0rjnD) -
The microsite is available in 47 languages – including Japanese (bit.ly/1W36E4g) -
Klick on the train icon and start your journey through mountains and over bridges (bit.ly/22Xet0a) -
Behind the scenes: the camera mounted on a train measures 2 inches (Source: Ubilabs) -
We also left our mark at Miniatur Wonderland (Source: Ubilabs)
Discover Hamburg’s Miniatur Wunderland on Google Street View
Who can’t relate to the fascination of model railroads? In the heart of Hamburg’s historic warehouse district, you will find a miniature world with big things to discover: Miniatur Wunderland. Every year, more than one million visitors of all ages marvel at self-propelled cars and ships in Scandinavia and watch the planes take off from Knuffingen Airport. Working on behalf of Google and Miniatur Wunderland, we brought this globally unique Street View project to life and made it accessible to an even larger audience on a microsite.
Following six months of intense development work, the first Google Street View project of its
kind was unveiled. From the initial concept development stage, the choice of technology, and the execution of the photo shoot through to design and programming, we were responsible for the entire project. As a result, some 50 painstakingly created 360° panoramic images and numerous train/car journeys take viewers into a world built to a scale of 1:87. A microsite takes visitors to all sections of Miniatur Wunderland, which measures around 1.5 square kilometers in real life. Destinations include Scandinavia, central Germany, Bavaria, Austria, Switzerland, Hamburg and the made-up city of Knuffingen complete with airport. In order to make the microsite as accessible to as many people as possible, the texts were written in 47 languages. What’s more, the project can also be accessed straight from Street View on Google Maps.
Keep your eye out for exciting details
Ski your way down the slopes of the Austrian Alps, pass by the Matterhorn on the Rhaetian
Railway, or soak up the nightlife of Las Vegas – in Hamburg’s Miniatur Wunderland, there is something for everyone. But the people behind the world’s largest model railroad were not content with merely recreating real scenes in a detailed and true-to-life fashion. In fact, the whole attraction is peppered with surprising details that you don’t see every day. At a giant festival venue, you will find a group of cows enjoying a DJ Bobo concert among the crowd of 21,000 miniature people. In the United States section of Miniatur Wunderland, the Grim Reaper eagerly awaits a group of rafting tourists as they head down the Colorado River. We also added a few small details for our photos. Two of our employees – Kevin Krause, a passionate racing cyclist, and Michael Pletziger, who loves riding his Vespa – are immortalized next to a Ubilabs bus in Knuffingen. The Google Street View car was built specially for the project.