B&M, Intamin, and Gerstlauer: The Coaster Manufacturers Behind Alton Towers, Explained

Coaster brands and who they are.....

Every rollercoaster at Alton Towers was actually built by a specialist manufacturing company, working alongside the park's own creative team to turn a concept into 800 tonnes of moving steel. Three names come up again and again across the park's headline attractions: Bolliger & Mabillard, Intamin, and Gerstlauer. Here's who they actually are, how they came to exist, and which specific Alton Towers rides carry each company's engineering fingerprints.

Bolliger & Mabillard: The Swiss Precision Specialists

Bolliger & Mabillard, universally known within the industry simply as B&M, is a roller coaster design consultancy based in Monthey, Switzerland, founded in 1988 by Walter Bolliger and Claude Mabillard. Both founders had previously worked together at Giovanola, a manufacturing company that itself supplied rides to Intamin — meaning two of the biggest names in Alton Towers' coaster history share a genuinely tangled, interconnected origin story before either company existed under its current name.

While at Giovanola through the 1970s and 80s, Bolliger and Mabillard worked on genuinely significant early projects, including helping design Shockwave, one of the very first stand-up rollercoasters, for Six Flags Magic Mountain. After leaving to form their own company in 1988, the pair built B&M from a genuinely small operation — starting with just four employees — into one of the most respected coaster manufacturers in the world, eventually growing to over thirty staff, predominantly engineers and draftspeople.

B&M's defining technical achievement, and the one most directly relevant to Alton Towers' history, was pioneering the inverted rollercoaster — a design where the train runs beneath the track rather than on top of it, with riders' seats attached directly to the wheel carriage above them. This technology debuted commercially with Batman: The Ride at Six Flags Great America in May 1992, and it was this same breakthrough that Alton Towers, through designer John Wardley, sought out specifically for what would become Nemesis just two years later.

B&M has gone on to pioneer several further ride categories beyond the inverted coaster, including the Floorless Coaster and the Dive Coaster — the latter making its own significant appearance at Alton Towers through Oblivion. The company reached its 100th built rollercoaster in 2016, and its portfolio now spans eleven distinct coaster model types, from stand-up and inverted designs through to flying coasters, hyper coasters, and wing coasters.

B&M's Alton Towers rides include: Nemesis Reborn (Europe's first inverted coaster), Oblivion (the world's first Dive Coaster), and Galactica, originally Air (the world's first B&M flying coaster).

Intamin: The Record-Chasing Innovators

Intamin holds the distinction of being the oldest of the three manufacturers discussed here, founded in 1967 in Bern, Switzerland, by three men — Robert Spieldiener, Reinhold Spieldiener, and Alfons Saiko — working out of a small shared apartment that served as their entire office. The company's name is a syllabic abbreviation of "International Amusement Installations," and over more than five decades since, it's grown from that modest beginning into a genuinely global operation, now headquartered in Schaan, Liechtenstein, with additional corporate offices spanning Europe, Asia, and the United States.

Intamin's product range has always been unusually broad compared to some of its more specialised competitors, spanning not just rollercoasters but water rides, giant wheels, drop towers, dark rides, and even monorail and public transportation systems. The company entered the simulator and motion cinema market early too, partnering with a Californian large-format film projection supplier and quickly becoming a market leader in that space, delivering motion cinema experiences to major clients including Universal.

Where Intamin has made its most significant mark on the wider coaster industry is through raw performance engineering. The company created the first hydraulic launch system, branded the Accelerator Coaster, capable of catapulting a train from a standing start to speeds exceeding 240 kilometres per hour in a matter of seconds. This same launch technology underpins some of the fastest, most record-breaking coasters in the world, including Kingda Ka, once North America's tallest and fastest rollercoaster. More recently, Intamin partnered on Falcon's Flight, currently recognised as the world's tallest, fastest, and longest coaster simultaneously, at Six Flags Qiddiya in Saudi Arabia — a genuinely stark contrast in scale to anything the treeline-restricted Alton Towers could ever host, but a useful reminder of just how far Intamin's engineering capability extends beyond its more modestly scaled UK installations.

Intamin's Alton Towers rides include: Rita and Th13teen, both launched coasters relying on Intamin's technology to deliver rapid acceleration without a traditional chain lift hill, with Th13teen specifically built around the world's first vertical free-fall drop-track sequence.

Gerstlauer: The German Specialist Behind The Smiler

Gerstlauer Amusement Rides GmbH takes a genuinely different path into this story compared to B&M and Intamin. Founded in 1982 by Hubert Gerstlauer in Münsterhausen, Bavaria, the company began life not as a coaster manufacturer at all, but as an electrical and pneumatic equipment supplier, originally named Gerstlauer Elektro GmbH, providing components for Schwarzkopf Industries, another established German ride manufacturer where Hubert Gerstlauer had previously worked.

The company's transition into a full coaster manufacturer came after Schwarzkopf Industries' eventual bankruptcy in 1992, at which point Gerstlauer Elektro acquired part of the older company's operations and expanded into designing and building complete rides in its own right, rather than purely supplying components to someone else's projects. Gerstlauer has since built a genuinely strong reputation for reliability within the industry — as of a recent count, all but two of its 113 built rollercoasters remained in operation at their original park, a notably high retention rate compared to many competitors, whose rides are more frequently relocated, retired, or scrapped entirely.

Gerstlauer's most significant contribution to Alton Towers' history came through The Smiler, built as a Gerstlauer Infinity Coaster model and delivering a genuine, still-standing world record: the most inversions of any rollercoaster anywhere, with fourteen packed into a single, relatively compact layout. It's a genuinely impressive engineering achievement from a manufacturer whose roots lie in supplying electrical components to someone else's rides, rather than in the more headline-grabbing, record-chasing tradition B&M and Intamin have both built their reputations on.

Gerstlauer's Alton Towers rides include: The Smiler, holding the world record for most inversions on any rollercoaster since its 2013 opening.

What Actually Distinguishes Each Manufacturer's Rides

Beyond company history, it's genuinely useful to understand what each manufacturer tends to be known for in terms of the actual riding experience, since these reputational differences show up clearly across Alton Towers' own lineup.

B&M coasters are widely regarded within the enthusiast community for their smoothness — a reputation built on specific engineering choices, including a distinctive box-section track design with a large square spine, and two rails attached on the inside of the track rather than the outside, letting wheels run along the outer edge of the rail for a notably smoother ride than some competing track designs achieve. B&M coasters also frequently include a short pre-drop section immediately after the lift hill, specifically engineered to relieve mechanical strain on the chain lift mechanism — a small technical detail that speaks to the company's broader emphasis on precision and reliability over raw showmanship.

Intamin coasters, by contrast, tend to be associated with intensity and raw performance above smoothness — a reputation earned specifically through the company's launch technology and record-chasing engineering. Rita's rapid acceleration from a standing start is a direct product of this same underlying philosophy, even at a considerably smaller scale than Intamin's most extreme global installations.

Gerstlauer's reputation sits somewhat differently again, built less around a single defining technical signature and more around a track record of dense, complex, inversion-heavy layouts delivered within relatively compact physical footprints — exactly the engineering challenge The Smiler's fourteen inversions represented, especially given Alton Towers' treeline height restriction ruled out simply building taller to fit more track in.

Why Manufacturer Choice Matters to How a Ride Actually Feels

It's worth understanding why any of this matters beyond simple trivia. When Alton Towers commissions a new coaster, the choice of manufacturer isn't incidental — it directly shapes what kind of ride experience is actually achievable within the park's specific constraints, chiefly the treeline height restriction that's ruled out simply building taller for every major project since the park's earliest days. B&M's expertise in inverted, terrain-hugging coaster design made the company a natural fit for Nemesis's ground-level, excavated-pit concept. Intamin's launch technology let Rita deliver genuine intensity without needing the height a traditional lift hill would otherwise require to generate speed. And Gerstlauer's ability to pack dense inversion counts into a compact footprint made the company the right partner for The Smiler's record-breaking ambitions within a similarly constrained physical space.

Understanding which manufacturer built a given ride, in other words, tells you something genuinely useful about why that specific ride feels the way it does — not just an arbitrary supplier credit, but a real clue to the underlying engineering philosophy shaping your experience on board.

A Small Industry With Overlapping Roots

It's worth finishing on a detail that captures just how small and interconnected this corner of the engineering world genuinely is. B&M's founders learned their craft at Giovanola, a company that itself built rides supplied under the Intamin brand — meaning two of Alton Towers' three major coaster manufacturers share a genuine, direct lineage, despite operating as entirely separate, sometimes competing companies for decades since. It's a reminder that the global rollercoaster manufacturing industry, for all its record-breaking ambition and international reach, remains a genuinely small, specialist field, where a handful of highly skilled engineers and their protégés have shaped an outsized share of the thrill rides millions of people queue for every year — including, in Alton Towers' case, nearly every headline coaster the park has ever built.

Quick Reference: Coaster Manufacturers at Alton Towers

• Bolliger & Mabillard (B&M): Founded 1988, Monthey, Switzerland — pioneered the inverted coaster; built Nemesis Reborn, Oblivion, and Galactica (Air); known for smooth, precision-engineered rides using box-section track
• Intamin: Founded 1967, Schaan, Liechtenstein — pioneered hydraulic launch coaster technology; built Rita and Th13teen; known for intensity and record-chasing performance engineering
• Gerstlauer: Founded 1982, Münsterhausen, Germany — began as an electrical components supplier before becoming a full coaster manufacturer in 1992; built The Smiler; known for dense, inversion-heavy layouts within compact footprints
• A shared origin: B&M's founders trained at Giovanola, a manufacturer that itself supplied rides to Intamin — connecting two of Alton Towers' three major coaster builders through a shared professional lineage
• Why it matters: Each manufacturer's specific engineering strengths directly shaped how Alton Towers' most significant rides were able to deliver intensity within the park's treeline height restriction