The Grampian Eye, known locally as the Aberdeen Eye, is the Ferris wheel at Codona’s Amusement Park on the city’s beachfront. It has carried passengers above the North Sea coastline since 2005 and remains one of the most recognisable landmarks on Aberdeen beach.
The wheel in detail
As part of our documentation work for Aberdeen’s coastal landmarks, we have produced a clean technical illustration of the wheel, built from its published dimensions: a double rim carried on slender lattice spokes, a riveted hub, twin A-frame legs, a boarding platform with railings and steps, and twenty upright cabins in five bright colours.
An interactive model
The interactive three-dimensional model needs JavaScript. The illustration and the technical description above cover the same information.
The model is drawn live in your browser with hand-written WebGL2; it uses no third-party libraries and loads nothing from outside this site. Drag to orbit the camera, scroll or pinch to zoom, and use the buttons to pause the rotation or reset the view. Visitors who prefer reduced motion will find the wheel standing still until they choose to spin it. The cabins stay upright throughout the turn, exactly as the real gondolas do.
Key facts
- Overall height: 30.5 metres (100 feet).
- Cabins: 20 enclosed gondolas, six seats each.
- Opened: 2005, with sponsorship from Grampian Television, now STV.
- Manufacturer: Technical Park, catalogue model Ferris Wheel 30 MT, engineered to the German standard DIN 4112.
- Location: Codona’s Amusement Park, Beach Boulevard and Links Road, Aberdeen AB24 5EN, at 57.1512 degrees north, 2.0786 degrees west.
A century of seaside fun on the Queens Links
The park itself opened in 1970, after the Codona family won the City of Aberdeen’s 1969 tender for the Queens Links site. The family had operated fairground rides in the city since the days of Francesco Codoni, who arrived in the Aberdeen area in the 1790s. The wheel was added in 2005 as the park’s centrepiece attraction, carrying the name of the regional television company that sponsored it.
Today the wheel stands within the area covered by the City Council’s City Centre and Beach Master Plan, a one hundred and fifty million pound regeneration of the heart of Aberdeen. As part of the beachfront works, the stretch of Beach Boulevard between Links Road and the Esplanade has been permanently closed to traffic and now forms part of the expanded beach park.
Sources
Compiled from public sources: the Technical Park product catalogue for the Ferris Wheel 30 MT, the About Aberdeen local history archive, OpenStreetMap for the park’s location, and Aberdeen City Council’s published Master Plan documents. Dimensions follow the manufacturer’s catalogue and will be confirmed against on-site measurement as our documentation work continues.