George, Paul, Ringo, and John cross the Gulliver's Gate version of Abbey Road.
Gulliver's Gate: A Big Little World (Closed)
New York, New York
If you're going to build a miniature world, make it big.
That's the thinking behind Gulliver's Gate, which opened on April 6, 2017, in the former New York Times building just off of Times Square in New York City.
This Lilliputian wonderland offers a large list of superlatives: $40 million invested; nearly 50,000 square feet of displays; eight teams of model-makers on five continents who built over 100 miniature cities, including a city-of-the-future on Mars (We've seen one of those elsewhere); 1,000 trains; 10,000 cars and trucks; countless people. Everything is at 1:87 scale, which means that a six-foot-tall person is less than an inch high.
It's the vision of Eiran Gazit, a former officer in the Israeli military. He's said that his goals with Gulliver's Gate included getting "as much stuff to move as possible" -- chickens peck in barnyards, jackhammers jiggle at construction sites -- and to make it a happy world where everything works and no one is angry.
It's also a world of highlights, featuring the most impressive buildings and structures: the Great Wall of China, the Panama Canal, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, etc. Sprinkled among them are comedy scenes such as a bear stopping traffic in Russia and a mummy chasing tourists in Egypt.
Visitors to Gulliver's Gate can download its app (to help them understand what they're looking at). And for an extra 50 bucks they can become a "citizen" of Gulliver's Gate by stepping into a scanning booth and having an itty-bitty version of themselves 3D printed and added to the attraction.
