Quote:
Originally Posted by Manhattanboy
Its unfortunate but not surprising that the slope of the seating bowl, particularly the lower sections, will result in inferior sight lines to what we have now in the Saddledome. The distance from most seats to centre ice in the Dome is much shorter than in most buildings. The sight lines in the Saddledome might be the best in the NHL.
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As far as I can tell, the viewing angles in the new building will be virtually identical to what we have in the Saddledome.
I've posted this before...
A while back, someone here had a set of the original design blueprints for the Saddledome and was kind enough to share them. When the designs for the new building were first posted, I decided to overlay the Saddledome plans on the new building and was surprised to see how much they matched up.
On this image, the red area is the original (pre-1995 renovation) layout of the Saddledome seating bowl. The darker is the original lower bowl and the lighter is the original upper bowl. The dark line around the lower bowl of the Saddledome is the top of the retractable seats that go around the bowl. As it happens, this is also where the lower suites were built during the 1995 renovation.
The blue side of this image is the layout for the new building. The dark is the lower bowl, the light is the upper bowl, and the green are the suites.
As you can see, the lower bowl of the new building is slightly bigger than the original lower bowl of the Saddledome (and significantly bigger than the current configuration) and the upper bowl will be slightly smaller (and significantly smaller than what we have now).
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The most-recent drawings for the new building also include interior height information, so I decided to compare those to the Saddledome as well (spoiler for size)...
Fortunately, both documents give the dimensions in mm, so it's easy to compare.
Here are the various elevations (all relative to the ice level at 0m):
Saddledome:- Ice: 0m
- Lower Suites (Ground)*: 4.5m
- Main Concourse: 9.0m
- Mid-Concourse Mezz: 12.32m
- Upper Suites: 21.22m
- 300 walkway: 25.82m
- Top of 300: 37.22m
- Top of Saddle: 40.25m / 35.75m above ground
* In the 1995 renovation, the lower level suites and Club concourse were built where there was originally an Event Level Mezzanine.
Also note that the renovation didn't change most of the seats in the building. It just shifted about 10 rows of seats from the top of the lower bowl to the bottom of the upper bowl.
New Building:- Ice: 0m
- Main Concourse (Ground): 6.575m
- Club Mezz: 11.425m
- Premium Level (Suites): 15.295m
- Upper Concourse: 20.73m
- Top of Upper Bowl: 28.57m
- Balcony/Press Level: 31.82m
- Top of Parapet: 43.42m / 36.845m above ground
What this all means is if you're sitting at centre ice in the highest seat in the upper bowl, you'll be 28.57m above ice level. This is less than 3m higher than the equivalent seat in the third row of the 300 level of the Saddledome.
Both seats are approximately 51m "horizontally" from centre ice. That means your straight-line (diagonal) distance from the highest seat in the new arena to centre ice will be 58.5m and the same for the third row of the 300 level at the Saddledome is 57.2m. Less than 1.5m difference (about 2%), if my math is correct.