New York is only one of 25 cities inside Gulliver’s Gate, which itself is inside the former headquarters of the New York Times in Times Square, New York City. Called Gulliver’s Gate, it’s real competition for the likes of Hamburg’s Miniatur Wunderland.
At 4600 square meters, 1,000 trains, 10,000 cars and 100,000 people it’s one of the biggest little worlds around, and it’s growing. In fact, visitors can have themselves scanned and become ‘model citizens’ with a 1/87 image of themselves inserted into the exhibit, and a copy to take home.
While the $40 million-dollar project, which took 600 modelers two years to build, features 25 cities with scenes past and present (see the Beatles above, crossing Abbey Road, London), the biggest feature is a huge model of Manhattan, with many detailed buildings and quite a few little jokes: a truckful of lumber spilled on the highway, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man from Ghostbusters, and more.
Many of the exhibits are interactive; visitors receive a silver key that enables them to ‘turn on’ the animated carousels, Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloons and more.
