Just to make things clear here: Cyclocross is incredibly popular in Belgium (It's the third most popular spectator sport behind soccer, and road cycling). It's not very popular even in the rest of Europe (look at the attendance at Dutch Nationals for an example, and the Netherlands is probably the second most popular cylcocross country). From a spectator standpoint it's virtually nonexistent in the US (being more a participation sport at best, and even then it's really niche).
Important to point out that some of the more "artificial" aspects of some European cyclocross races are in the Belgian series races (Especially BPost trophy and BricoCross) and not World Cups and DEFINITELY not the World Championships. Even then most of those races just have one or two (at most) "gimmick" features a course.
This course just just looks to have too many of these kind of features crammed into one. You don't need a "mud pit" or a "sand pit" just for the sake of having them. The berm looks cool and I think the running on the roof of the museum looks awesome. The Beer tent is a good addition as well. Just looks like they went a little bit overboard for this one. But all in all I give them props for trying something different.