Year in review 2023

Once again this year, people who would otherwise not be able to afford it were invited to Wunderland on several days in January. The gratitude was overwhelming and we are more than happy to be able to give thousands of people a few moments away from their everyday lives.

Patagonia, the end of the world, was built over the course of four years in collaboration with the wonderful Martinez model-making family in Argentina, just like Rio de Janeiro before it. Corona meant that we were unable to work together with our Argentinian friends in a workshop for a long time. With Patagonia, this has become more often again, which you can feel in every pore. In addition to landmarks such as the Perito-Moreno or the Fitz Roy, the sensational mechanics of the Drake Passage stand out. This was one of the last key elements that arrived in Hamburg in March, closing the last gap in the landscape from the Antarctic to the Torres del Paine National Park.

In April, we were delighted that the pedestrian bridge between the storage buildings was awarded with the German Bridge Construction Prize by the VBI. With the opening of Rio de Janeiro in December 2021, the warehouse unit L was connected by a bridge and Wunderland gained a lot of new space for future construction phases. In addition to Rio, the special exhibitions and virtual reality experiences at YULLBE WUNDERLAND quickly became an established part of a visit to Wunderland.

At the same time, our technicians extended other floors of the warehouse and opened the second floor to all visitors in April. Since then, the Wunderland Diner has been serving the popular classics of American cuisine in an extraordinary ambience!

But there is even more to discover: In our 3D scanner, Wunderland guests can create their own personal souvenir and shrink themselves into miniature scenes. The model-making team has created eight small masterpieces for the special 3D paintings exhibition. Frederik came up with the idea for the exhibition while filming the RTL show Superklein, which was broadcast at almost the same time. The task on the show was to bring a three-dimensional landscape to life in a picture frame. With the question of whether this could also be possible with world-famous masterpieces of art, he entered the model-making. Almost a year and many 1,000 hours of work later, you can see the answer here.

After four years of hard work on two continents, over 50,000 working hours and construction costs of almost 2,000,000 euros, the joy of opening the new Patagonia section was huge. With an area of 65 square meters, the exhibit in the new warehouse building complements the existing Rio de Janeiro and adds a wonderful attraction to Wunderland.

The famous German polar explorer and author Arved Fuchs was one of the first to take a look at the new world of the Andes, glaciers and penguins. The Second Mayor of Hamburg, Katharina Fegebank, also honored us with her visit on this special day! Together we opened the section with the sound of a foghorn and admired the new scenes around the new part of South America.

It's Sesame Street's birthday and we're celebrating with them! Our creative model builders have created the biggest birthday party in Wunderland with the movie set, the figures and hundreds of guests and it has turned out wonderfully! The scene was festively set in the Hamburg section and even the Cookie Monster made a personal appearance at the opening!

16 years ago, we built a special exhibition on the reunification of Germany in collaboration with the Federal Agency for Civic Education. Using the example of a fictional crossroad in Berlin, the model-making team conveyed content in a playful way and reflected the history in seven different dioramas.

In 2023, the celebrations for the German Unification Day took place in Hamburg once again, so we quickly decided to continue the story. The decades of the reunified Germany were added in two new dioramas.

Celebrity visit to Wunderland: The world-famous rock band Metallica was a guest at Wunderland and has been playing a concert on our model display ever since! Look out for them at the Antarctic in the Patagonia section! Former Formula 1 world champion Nico Rosberg watched Gerrit do the first laps of his Monaco Formula 1 circuit. As someone who grew up in Monaco, we couldn't have imagined that the construction section would leave even him speechless!

Previously, Gerrit, together with Nico Rosberg and EnBW, inaugurated the first modern charging parks in the Hamburg, Knuffingen and Central Germany sections, meaning that e-mobility finally arrived in Wunderland in style.

After more than a year of construction, the time has come: the new Speicherstadt in our Hamburg section is finished, installed and open! Over 5,000 individual parts and 800 LEDs were needed to recreate the new home of Wunderland. If you look very closely, you can also find Wunderland in Wunderland!

All the joints in the bricks were carved so that around 750,000 bricks are visible. A famous Hamburg photo motif was added with the Wasserschloss, bringing the atmosphere of the Speicherstadt to Wunderland.

Wunderland is coming to the big screen in 2024 with the movie WONDERLAND and on October 1st the first screening of the film took place at the Hamburg Film Festival. Watching the film in Hamburg's largest cinema together with over 1,000 enthusiastic viewers made us look forward to the premiere next year!

Just 1.5 years after the opening of our virtual reality experiences, which we developed in collaboration with Europa-Park, over 200,000 guests have already been able to experience Wunderland in a very special way. For our 30-minute experiences, the technology team took the equipment to the next level that fall.

The VR equipment, which previously weighed almost 6 kg, is now lighter thanks to new VR glasses, making it more comfortable to wear. The new kit also means there is no longer any need for a backpack computer. There are also vests that use 40 small motors to transmit haptic vibrations and make the experience seem even more real.

But that's not all: a new version of "The Crazy Shrinkage Tour" is in the pipeline and you can look forward to seeing which Wunderland locations will be added to the adventure next spring.