What is a Miniature Park
Miniature parks are tourist attractions featuring scale models of buildings in beautiful landscape surroundings. Some miniature parks are scale models of whole towns and cities; other parks are stunning gardens with several separate themed dioramas in them.
Miniature Parks vary in size from the massive "Mini Europe" in Belgium and "Madurodam" in Holland which feature hundreds of international and national landmark buildings, down to the beautiful small "model villages" like Bekonscot in UK and "Klein Erzebirge" in Germany. Miniature parks can even sometimes be indoors. But all of them make great family trip destinations!
Most miniature parks are built to a consistent scale; varying from 1:72 as used by Miniature World in Canada, up to the 1:9 scale of Wimborne Model Town, UK.
Mainland Europe and Asia mostly use the metric scale of 1:25, whilst North America, Australia, NZ and UK examples have been based upon 1:12 and imperial measurement scales.
Miniature Parks can be divided into three main groups:
- Miniature Parkland
- Model Villages
- Indoor displays
There has been a distinct move away from the "model village" concept since the mid-late 20th Century towards a "miniature park" concept. Model villages were usually larger-scale, sat in a cohesive miniature landscape and allow viewing and physical interaction with the exhibits, such as publicly-accessed streets and urban areas. Miniature parks however, are primarily concerned with the display of exhibits in their own right, viewed from a distance. Model railways, rivers and roads may provide a continuation between miniature parks exhibits. Indoor displays are usually dioramas with large working model railways, and highly detailed but over a smaller actual area.