• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

Stuff at Alton by site area

Matt N

TS Member
Favourite Ride
Mako (SeaWorld Orlando)
Hi guys. I'm not sure if this warrants its own thread or not, but I recently installed Google Earth Pro on my computer, and I thought it might be fun to see how big the site areas of some of Alton's rides are. So for fun, I decided that using polygons, I would measure the approximate total area that some of the park's rides take up, and I thought I'd share with you guys some of what I found. For reference, these measurements include queue line and/or plaza in some cases.

Let's start with the coasters... (all measurements are to the nearest 100 square metres)
Coasters
  • Spinball Whizzer: approx. 3,300 (including plaza and queue)
  • Octonauts: approx. 1,000 (including plaza and queue)
  • Wicker Man: approx. 10,600 (including plaza and queue)
  • Smiler: approx. 5,800 (including queue)
  • Oblivion: approx. 8,000
  • Rita: approx. 9,000
  • Thirteen: approx. 8,600 (excluding queue, as this wasn't very visible on aerial view)
  • Nemesis: approx. 10,100 (including queue)
  • Galactica: approx. 13,600 (unsure whether queue included or not, but does incorporate some plaza)
  • Runaway Mine Train: approx. 5,100 (including queue and a little bit of plaza)
Now let's see how some of the non-coasters compared...
Non-Coasters
  • Congo River Rapids: approx. 17,600 (including queue and the bulk of Katanga Canyon that's integrated into the middle)
  • Duel: approx. 2,900
  • Battle Galleons: approx. 2,300 (including queue line and some of the water shooter locations)
  • Alton Towers Dungeon: approx. 3,400
  • Gangsta Granny: approx. 1,300 (including outdoor queue line)
I also did a few non-ride area measurements:
Non-Rides
  • Lawns on Towers Street side of lake: approx. 18,400 (including some path)
  • Lake: approx. 14,900
  • Lawns on Towers side of lake: approx. 19,800
  • Towers Ruins: approx. 11,800 (fully enclosed area)
  • Air car park (I thought I'd scope it out given many cite it as a potential development spot): approx. 19,700 (excluding golden path)
  • Stargazing Pods: approx. 18,600
  • Enchanted Village: approx. 32,900
  • Alton Towers Hotel: approx. 8,700 (including garden)
  • Conference Centre: approx. 2,600
  • CBeebies Land Hotel: approx. 2,100
  • Splash Landings Hotel: approx. 13,800 (including waterpark)
  • Extraordinary Golf: approx. 3,800
  • Gardens: approx. 83,400
  • Coaster Corner: approx. 11,100 (although I'm admittedly unsure on CC's scope, so this could be a conservative estimate)
I hope you find this interesting (I know I certainly did...)! Do you guys agree with my measurements? Are you surprised by anything?
 
Hi guys. I'm not sure if this warrants its own thread or not, but I recently installed Google Earth Pro on my computer, and I thought it might be fun to see how big the site areas of some of Alton's rides are. So for fun, I decided that using polygons, I would measure the approximate total area that some of the park's rides take up, and I thought I'd share with you guys some of what I found. For reference, these measurements include queue line and/or plaza in some cases.

Let's start with the coasters... (all measurements are to the nearest 100 square metres)
Coasters
  • Spinball Whizzer: approx. 3,300 (including plaza and queue)
  • Octonauts: approx. 1,000 (including plaza and queue)
  • Wicker Man: approx. 10,600 (including plaza and queue)
  • Smiler: approx. 5,800 (including queue)
  • Oblivion: approx. 8,000
  • Rita: approx. 9,000
  • Thirteen: approx. 8,600 (excluding queue, as this wasn't very visible on aerial view)
  • Nemesis: approx. 10,100 (including queue)
  • Galactica: approx. 13,600 (unsure whether queue included or not, but does incorporate some plaza)
  • Runaway Mine Train: approx. 5,100 (including queue and a little bit of plaza)
Now let's see how some of the non-coasters compared...
Non-Coasters
  • Congo River Rapids: approx. 17,600 (including queue and the bulk of Katanga Canyon that's integrated into the middle)
  • Duel: approx. 2,900
  • Battle Galleons: approx. 2,300 (including queue line and some of the water shooter locations)
  • Alton Towers Dungeon: approx. 3,400
  • Gangsta Granny: approx. 1,300 (including outdoor queue line)
I also did a few non-ride area measurements:
Non-Rides
  • Lawns on Towers Street side of lake: approx. 18,400 (including some path)
  • Lake: approx. 14,900
  • Lawns on Towers side of lake: approx. 19,800
  • Towers Ruins: approx. 11,800 (fully enclosed area)
  • Air car park (I thought I'd scope it out given many cite it as a potential development spot): approx. 19,700 (excluding golden path)
  • Stargazing Pods: approx. 18,600
  • Enchanted Village: approx. 32,900
  • Alton Towers Hotel: approx. 8,700 (including garden)
  • Conference Centre: approx. 2,600
  • CBeebies Land Hotel: approx. 2,100
  • Splash Landings Hotel: approx. 13,800 (including waterpark)
  • Extraordinary Golf: approx. 3,800
  • Gardens: approx. 83,400
  • Coaster Corner: approx. 11,100 (although I'm admittedly unsure on CC's scope, so this could be a conservative estimate)
I hope you find this interesting (I know I certainly did...)! Do you guys agree with my measurements? Are you surprised by anything?
Since we were talking about the size of the valley earlier, yeah it is. I'm surprised how small the Air Car Park is actually. I thought it was bigger than that.
 
If nothing else this shows how insanely compact the Smiler is, three times more track than Oblivion in 2/3rds of the space is just insane
 
Since we were talking about the size of the valley earlier, yeah it is. I'm surprised how small the Air Car Park is actually. I thought it was bigger than that.
It could still fit 2/3 coasters in it so for the long term it's a very good site to use
 
Hi guys. I'm not sure if this warrants its own thread or not, but I recently installed Google Earth Pro on my computer, and I thought it might be fun to see how big the site areas of some of Alton's rides are. So for fun, I decided that using polygons, I would measure the approximate total area that some of the park's rides take up, and I thought I'd share with you guys some of what I found. For reference, these measurements include queue line and/or plaza in some cases.

Let's start with the coasters... (all measurements are to the nearest 100 square metres)
Coasters
  • Spinball Whizzer: approx. 3,300 (including plaza and queue)
  • Octonauts: approx. 1,000 (including plaza and queue)
  • Wicker Man: approx. 10,600 (including plaza and queue)
  • Smiler: approx. 5,800 (including queue)
  • Oblivion: approx. 8,000
  • Rita: approx. 9,000
  • Thirteen: approx. 8,600 (excluding queue, as this wasn't very visible on aerial view)
  • Nemesis: approx. 10,100 (including queue)
  • Galactica: approx. 13,600 (unsure whether queue included or not, but does incorporate some plaza)
  • Runaway Mine Train: approx. 5,100 (including queue and a little bit of plaza)
Now let's see how some of the non-coasters compared...
Non-Coasters
  • Congo River Rapids: approx. 17,600 (including queue and the bulk of Katanga Canyon that's integrated into the middle)
  • Duel: approx. 2,900
  • Battle Galleons: approx. 2,300 (including queue line and some of the water shooter locations)
  • Alton Towers Dungeon: approx. 3,400
  • Gangsta Granny: approx. 1,300 (including outdoor queue line)
I also did a few non-ride area measurements:
Non-Rides
  • Lawns on Towers Street side of lake: approx. 18,400 (including some path)
  • Lake: approx. 14,900
  • Lawns on Towers side of lake: approx. 19,800
  • Towers Ruins: approx. 11,800 (fully enclosed area)
  • Air car park (I thought I'd scope it out given many cite it as a potential development spot): approx. 19,700 (excluding golden path)
  • Stargazing Pods: approx. 18,600
  • Enchanted Village: approx. 32,900
  • Alton Towers Hotel: approx. 8,700 (including garden)
  • Conference Centre: approx. 2,600
  • CBeebies Land Hotel: approx. 2,100
  • Splash Landings Hotel: approx. 13,800 (including waterpark)
  • Extraordinary Golf: approx. 3,800
  • Gardens: approx. 83,400
  • Coaster Corner: approx. 11,100 (although I'm admittedly unsure on CC's scope, so this could be a conservative estimate)
I hope you find this interesting (I know I certainly did...)! Do you guys agree with my measurements? Are you surprised by anything?
I remember doing something similar a few years ago comparing Thorpe with Towers. And if I got my scaling right in Google Earth, Thorpe fitted into just the Garden and valley area of Towers! Can you confirm this @Matt N ?
 
@Matt N would it be possible for you to figure out how big the queue lines for the coasters are so a rough estimation could be made of how many people can fit in the queue
 
Top