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[202X] Project Horizon (SW9?): Planning Approved

Squiggs said:
I will almost guarantee you that guests will not enter this new area through Walliams World. If TWoDW is still in the park by the time a ride opens on coaster corner, the area will shrink and the Royal Carousel will be relocated, so the entrance will not be where it currently is.
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It's quite interesting because I'm sure I remember someone saying the entrance arch to Walliams world looked easily moveable, maybe this is why.
 
Skyscraper said:
I'm just putting this out there, I'd love to see a Mack suspended powered coaster, like Arthur at Europa. Would be a fantastic edition and suitable for the whole family, and could have outdoor sections to draw people in. 🙂
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If it is a coaster, I think something like Arthur would be a good shout for various reasons, especially to maximise the height available for the ride.
 
Jb85 said:
True but that's a lot of water to move around.
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Any new water ride like a flume / trough based ride and or a water coaster would need an isolated clean and filtered body of water, to comply with legislation. So no matter where they built it, they could not draw from the parks existing bodies of water. Making the logistical task of filling up a new isolated body of water very similar wherever it was built. Even more so

They manage to fill up the dungeons trough with clean unfiltered water every year and have done since the 80's. While that probably would not hold as much water, it suggests they have infrastructure in place at that part of the park to get large amounts of fresh water.
 
Could TWODW/new area/Fountain Square possibly become a new festive hub for the park if they ever wanted to expand their Christmas event?

I think it's quite clever how a considerable bulk of the park's indoor attractions are all clustered together in that small area behind the Towers, and it would make managing a Christmas event very easy!
 
Matt N said:
Could TWODW/new area/Fountain Square possibly become a new festive hub for the park if they ever wanted to expand their Christmas event?

I think it's quite clever how a considerable bulk of the park's indoor attractions are all clustered together in that small area behind the Towers, and it would make managing a Christmas event very easy!
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I actually think there's something in this. They could theme the inside of the existing buildings and put the flats in there (imagine Flavios actually inside a themed dance hall). Put the Dungeons back to a family dark ride and reopen the cinema. Then with this new building, GG and Hex you have a quite substantial portion of the park with a solid lineup of all year round attractions.
 
With this, Duel and Nemesis I'm currently the most excited and optimistic I've been about Alton Towers in a long time. I'd say its relatively likely either this or the Duel project will involve an IP of some sort (maybe both even), and if so I just hope it is executed well.

And just because its always fun at this point to throw around ideas which will never ever happen, my ideal dark ride for Alton would be a Mack Inverted Powered coaster à la Arthur at Europa, themed to a journey through the natural world, shrinking down to the size of insects to flying over rainforests. Packed with animatronics with a combination of screens and set pieces, narrated by David Attenborough with a BBC Planet Earth IP.
We can all dream right?
 
DistortAMG said:
Any new water ride like a flume / trough based ride and or a water coaster would need an isolated clean and filtered body of water, to comply with legislation. So no matter where they built it, they could not draw from the parks existing bodies of water. Making the logistical task of filling up a new isolated body of water very similar wherever it was built. Even more so

They manage to fill up the dungeons trough with clean unfiltered water every year and have done since the 80's. While that probably would not hold as much water, it suggests they have infrastructure in place at that part of the park to get large amounts of fresh water.
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Not just this, but of course, if they needed water in that area, and there isn’t currently mains water there, they could always… I dunno… just run a new water main from existing infrastructure?

Lol with a large new addition like this, what infrastructure is or is not in the area is largely irrelevant. They built a series of lodges in a field… fairly sure that field didn’t have running mains water, or electricity for that matter


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On an unrelated note, I've been on Google Earth scoping this area out and doing some comparisons with existing attractions to gauge some idea of what kind of space we have to play with here.

From what I could ascertain from the helpful guide that @Squiggs posted, the Mouse site alone is around 1,795 square metres, the combined area available in and around both the Alton Mouse and the Alton Beast sites is around 4,005 square metres, and the Adventureland 4-11 space is roughly 2,005 square metres (could be a bit more if you felled the trees separating Adventureland 4-11 and Coaster Corner).

The whole combined area, if everything is amalgamated together and things like trees in the middle aren't considered (I didn't include the trees separating A4-11 and CC in either measurement) is around 7,079 square metres, but as I said, that is in very broad brush terms and literally includes everything within those 3 areas. I did exclude Merlin Magic Making to the North East, the Flag Tower to the North West, and the historic monument to the South, however, so it does take into account some of the boundaries faced.

For some idea, let's look at some existing indoor attractions as points of comparison:
Alton Towers' Other Dark Rides
  • Alton Towers Dungeon: 2,951 square metres
  • Duel (excluding garden queue line and Gloomy Wood area): 3,080 square metres
  • Nemesis Sub-Terra (excluding queue line): 743 square metres
  • Gangsta Granny (excluding outdoor queue line): 881 square metres
Other Merlin-Built Dark Rides/Areas
  • Derren Brown's Ghost Train (Thorpe Park): 3,680 square metres
  • Flight of the Sky Lion (Legoland Windsor): 869 square metres (Sky Lion alone), 4,627 square metres (entirety of Lego Mythica)
  • Lego Ninjago: The Ride (Legoland Windsor): 1,916 square metres (Lego Ninjago: The Ride alone), 2,843 square metres (entirety of Lego Ninjago World)
  • Ghostbusters 5D (Heide Park): 1,746 square metres (possibly excluding queue line)
Worldwide Enclosed/Indoor Coasters
  • The Walking Dead: The Ride (Thorpe Park): 2,563 square metres (excluding queue line)
  • Van Helsing's Factory (Movie Park Germany): 3,859 square metres
  • Movie Park Studio Tour (Movie Park Germany): 5,943 square metres
  • Arthur: The Ride (Europa Park): 6,185 square metres (rough measurement of entire area)
  • Star Wars Hyperspace Mountain (Disneyland Paris): 6,545 square metres
  • Revenge of the Mummy (Universal Studios Florida): 9,358 square metres (rough measurement of entire building)
  • Rock'n'Rollercoaster (Disney's Hollywood Studios): 11,552 square metres (rough measurement of entire area)
  • Space Mountain (Magic Kingdom): 12,183 square metres (dome alone)
  • Vogel Rok (Efteling): 3,987 square metres (possibly excluding some queue line)
  • Crazy Bats (Phantasialand): 5,953 square metres
  • CanCan Coaster (Europa Park): 1,985 square metres
Worldwide Dark Rides
  • Symbolica (Efteling): 4,273 square metres (possibly excluding some queue line)
  • Piraten in Batavia (Europa Park): 4,658 square metres (roughly... knowing the design of that Scandinavia/Holland area, god only knows if this is right...)
  • Curse of DarKastle (Busch Gardens Williamsburg): 4,280 square metres
  • The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man (Universal's Islands of Adventure): 5,732 square metres
  • Transformers: The Ride (Universal Studios Florida): 3,079 square metres
  • Valhalla (Blackpool Pleasure Beach): 3,479 square metres
  • Challenge of Tutankhamon (Walibi Belgium): 2,816 square metres
  • Antarctica: Empire of the Penguin (SeaWorld Orlando): 4,643 square metres (ride building alone), 7,698 square metres (entire Antarctica realm)
  • Hotel Transylvania (Motiongate Dubai): 3,672 square metres (including facade)
In essence... I think they have a pretty big area to play with here! Bigger than any other Alton dark ride by a fair margin, and on par with some true dark ride and enclosed coaster heavyweights at other parks!
 
Good to see that Alton Towers / Merlin are seriously thinking about using "Coaster Corner" again. I fully agree the public consultation is to allay locals concerns about noise, as this is ultimately what led to the area closing back in the early 1990's. Two outdoor coasters that generated lots of screaming in close proximity to Alton village.

Whilst John Wardley has retired (or at least very semi-retired), he is unlikely to have huge input into the project. It is worth noting that JW is on record [some years ago - can't remember where I read it, but something tells me it may have been in the European Coaster Club "First Drop" magazine] saying that his favourite ride is not a coaster, but an indoor 4D ride, namely Spider-Man at Islands of Adventure. Spider-Man is 22yrs old now & is still pretty much the same as it was when it opened, bar the change to HD projection systems. It still gets long queues & riders come off it grinning from ear to ear. It's a ride aimed at a huge age-range of visitors too.

It would be great if something along these lines were on the cards for Coaster Corner. Alas, Spider-Man was an extremely expensive ride to build. I doubt Merlin have quite this much Capex in mind for whatever the new attraction will be.
 
Kraken27 said:
Alas, Spider-Man was an extremely expensive ride to build. I doubt Merlin have quite this much Capex in mind for whatever the new attraction will be.
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On the flip side, Spider-Man at the time of its inception used a brand new ride system, so I'd wager that a large part of its budget went towards the R&D costs of developing the initial prototype, which was extremely advanced for its time.

That ride system is far cheaper and far more commonplace these days; Six Flags parks bought them en masse a few years back, and even Merlin themselves recently installed one in the form of Jumanji: The Adventure at Gardaland!
 
What's making us all think this is SW then?

Whatever it'll be, to be granted permission it'll have to be quiet and invisible from outside the park. I can't see a rollercoaster - even if you build a warehouse for it you'll have too much noise.

A dark ride would make sense if the area didn't already have 3 in the immediate vicinity.

Tussauds/Lego Discovery Centre would make sense, but surely it's in the worst part of the park for resort access?

Maybe they're just planning a new shed for @rob666's beloved taxidermy to make a comeback?
 
If it is an indoor roller coaster, and it has new impressive tech as John Wardley’s comments suggest, I would wager the kuka arm roller coaster being build at Epic Universe in Florida has a good chance of coming to Alton Towers.

Combine Revenge of the Mummy with the kuka robo arms and show scenes from Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey and you get the general idea.
 
WillPS said:
What's making us all think this is SW then?

Whatever it'll be, to be granted permission it'll have to be quiet and invisible from outside the park. I can't see a rollercoaster - even if you build a warehouse for it you'll have too much noise.

A dark ride would make sense if the area didn't already have 3 in the immediate vicinity.

Tussauds/Lego Discovery Centre would make sense, but surely it's in the worst part of the park for resort access?

Maybe they're just planning a new shed for @rob666's beloved taxidermy to make a comeback?
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The thing making people think it's SW is that people "in the know" are allegedly saying it's an SW according to TowersTimes.

Also, can I ask; how would an enclosed roller coaster make noise? Surely if the building was well soundproofed, it would be just as quiet as a dark ride?

On an unrelated note, I was pondering ways in which the area could be accessed without needing to build an entrance within TWODW or change TWODW's layout. This initially seemed easier said than done, but looking at the park in Google Street View (admittedly from 2009, so possibly not the most accurate), it could be doable.

Let's take a look at the area down by what is now the Dungeons (or what was then Charlie and the Chocolate Factory):
Potential-Entrance-to-Coaster-Corner-Street-View.png

As you can see, there is a green fence between TWODW and the Dungeons building, blocking off... Coaster Corner/Adventureland 4-11. If you don't know what I mean, I've circled what I'm talking about in black and drawn arrows pointing towards it. At the time of this photo being taken, this area would have been problematic due to CATCF's queue line being in the way... but now the Dungeons is there, this isn't an issue anymore. It might pose an issue if the Dungeons is ever turned back into a family dark ride, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there; I'm sure the park would be able to work around this if they wanted.

Entering the area this way would also allow for TWODW to be bypassed completely, thus meaning that that land is unaffected.

If it would be easier, I've also indicated what I mean from an aerial view:
Potential-Entrance-to-Coaster-Corner-Aerial-View.png

I've circled both TWODW and the new area. The left arrow is the new area's entrance, and the right arrow is TWODW's current entrance.

P.S. Sorry about the slightly crude drawings...
 
Matt N said:
Also, can I ask; how would an enclosed roller coaster make noise? Surely if the building was well soundproofed, it would be just as quiet as a dark ride?
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Depends on the rollercoaster doesn't it. If you wanted to completely block noise from something small and not particularly noisy like a Pinfari Mini Apple, that'd be doable as you would be noise isolating a fairly small container and it wouldn't need that much isolation to begin with.

If we're talking an SW as we understand them... well they're all pretty noisy and huge (except Thirteen, I guess).
 
WillPS said:
Depends on the rollercoaster doesn't it. If you wanted to completely block noise from something small and not particularly noisy like a Pinfari Mini Apple, that'd be doable as you would be noise isolating a fairly small container and it wouldn't need that much isolation to begin with.

If we're talking an SW as we understand them... well they're all pretty noisy and huge (except Thirteen, I guess).
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I'd wager that this would likely be a more family-orientated, and by extension less extreme, coaster than any of the current SW rides, so it would likely make less noise by default, thus would require less isolation to make quiet.
 
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