Association of Leading Visitor Attractions

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15 Sep 2023

Pocket Planet attraction to bring 'immersive miniverse' on London's famous Oxford Street

A new immersive experiential attraction is being planned for the famous Oxford Street in the heart of UK capital city, London.

With a target of attracting more than a million visitors per year – and to support the revitalisation of the area, famous for its retail offer – Pocket Planet will feature small scale, but very large model landscapes of London, UK landmarks and a selection of scenes from around the world.

Spreading across 30,000sq ft, the attraction promises to "take miniature world model making to a whole new level" with moving aircraft, trains, vehicles and boats, while enhancing the physical models with audio and visual effects. .

The attraction will have an eye-catching, 50m frontage, along Oxford Street in the hope of attracting drop-ins from the estimated passing footfall of more than 150 million people per year.

The attraction will be opened in two phases.

A 10,000sq ft Pocket Planet retail and café will open its foors in Spring 2024, before the launch of the main Pocket Planet exhibit in early 2025.

The project is driven by two entrepreneurs, Mark Vlassopulos and Mark Brodermann.

“Our plan for Pocket Planet is for it to become the UK’s largest indoor miniature world and London’s favourite attraction,” says Mark Vlassopulos, CEO of Pocket Planet.

“Our ambition is to create the best and most attractive million-plus visitation tourist attraction in the UK.

"The site we have is incredible: we have 30,000sq ft with 50 metres of frontage at 500 Oxford Street right between Marble Arch and Bond Street tube station.

"It is the tourism hotspot of the UK and Pocket Planet will be a special space - an attraction on the scale of something that London hasn’t seen before. It will be a visual delight, both for the models and the ground-breaking audio-visual elements.”

According to Pocket Planet, it already has "a number of key investors and strategic partners in place".

These include ticketing partner Eventim and promotional merchandising specialist, Event Merchandising.

Mark Brodermann, COO of Pocket Planet, added: “Over the last five years we’ve looked at all the world’s leading miniature attractions, such as Small Worlds in Tokyo and Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg.

“They’re all great, but Pocket Planet will go an extra level. The team we’ve put together draws on the best of breed in leisure interior design and some of the greatest modellers in the world.

"Oxford Street is expected to have up to 200 million pedestrians per year walking right past our door. As a high volume, but at an affordable ticket price, attraction, the miniature world concept works very well. It has a relatively low operating cost, but a very metronomic and steady flow of income from ticket sales.”