Fork

The Orange County Property Appraiser updated their aerial imagery for 2012 too. Their photos were taken a little bit later in the month of January, showing the Jaws lagoon completely drained, but before any major demolition took place. A website called ParkRumors also has an interesting article with some of the aerial imagery from the Property Appraiser site showing off various things from around Universal, like the Jurassic Park ride without water and the mini-golf construction. http://parkrumors.com/universal-from-above/ And if you want to see the aerial imagery yourself, here's a link to the Property Appraiser's website: http://paarcgis.ocpafl.org/ Just check the "Aerial Photo 2012" box in the lower left to show the mos recent imagery.

http://www.reuters.com/article/pressRelease/idUS124175+19-May-2009+BW20090519

Rockit will not be open for any HHN event nights, but will be open during the day for day guests. Source: http://blogs.orlandosentinel.com/features_orlando/2009/09/universal-halloween-horror-nights-hollywood-rip-ride-rockit-dark.html

What? I'm not disagreeing with you, ryno. Obviously the coaster isn't open. That's the only proven fact out there. I'm talking to King_K. All he does is paraphrase posts from other sites and comes here acting like what he's read was fact. Like talking about no current major issues and everything being fixed. That's all pure speculation. The dispatch timing being of was also pure speculation from the same person who said the floors on the trains were cracked.

I hope you realize that the person who said the X-Car's floor was cracking was the same person who speculated that one of the major issues was with dispatch timing. Stop believing everything you read on other message boards and then coming here and touting their blind speculation as fact. It just makes you look silly in the long run.

I noticed that too. Maybe window's is sponsoring the ride? That's just a default image when setting up Microsoft's IIS7. It's also the same image Microsoft uses in their "Life Without Walls" campaign. Completely unrelated to the coaster.

I highly doubt anyone has ridden yet. They just finished re-installing the lift a few days ago. It sounds like he just got a behind the scenes tour of the attraction. Sea World held several tours before they opened Manta, so it's not surprising Universal is doing the same, albeit in a much smaller/less public manner. There's another article here: http://www.metro.co.uk/travel/article.html?Orlando,_Florida:_Theme_park_capital&in_article_id=674806&in_page_id=5 He also apparently got a hard hat tour of the site, and is also a British journalist... why the overseas favoritism, Uni? Anyway, he confirms one of the songs to be "Gloria Gaynor - I Will Survive". So it looks like we know two of the songs now, unless these guys are just making these articles up as they go. In actual attraction news, Johnnyupsidedown has added some new construction pictures to his website from this morning: http://www.johnnyupsidedown.com/new2009rr0.html And finally, I found this article rather amusing: http://www.lucian-bordianu.com/?p=11100 I assume english isn't the primary language of the guy who wrote that article, as he assumed "World's Highest Tech Roller Coaster" meant "World's Highest Tech Roller Coaster" and that when they stated the ride was 3,800 feet long, he assumed that to mean it was 3,800 feet high.

Bad picture, but train: Saw it while leaving the park this evening.

Universal's license agreement with Warner Brothers states that the themed area must be open by June 30th, 2010, so I wouldn't worry about it being behind schedule.

^ I would completely rule out any sort of opening before the end of June, with the ride now officially slated to open "Summer 2009". Here's another article from the Orlando Sentinel about the delay: http://www.orlandosentinel.com/travel/attractions/orl-story-universal-hollywood-rip-ride-rockit,0,4407333.story And someone put the video from that article on YouTube: It's nice to finally see an official video on this ride...

Well, the delay is official now. Summer 2009. Here's the article that confirms it, as well as talks about some of the ride's features: http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/retail/article994467.ece I guess Universal doesn't want to get into specifics with what's wrong, but at least we know now...

I wouldn't count on that just yet... The crane currently on site isn't the crane they've been using to lift the track pieces, nor do I think it's capable of lifting them. The crane by the lift now is there because they've been running conduit and wiring up it for the past few days. And speaking of lift track pieces, as of 4.19, there were still only 5 pieces of track in the holding area. Those include the bottom of the lift, the two top pieces of the lift, the final drop piece, and the final piece of station track. I've segmented off the pieces on this model: So unless the rest of the lift arrived this week, I wouldn't count on this coaster being finished relatively soon.

Well, now that all the station track has been installed and the final evac. tower completed, all but one smaller crane have been removed from property. Everything except the station work has come to a complete stop. I'm starting to wonder if Universal is ever going to say anything about the status of this project. We've only had that one official press release from over a year ago and the two really generic blog entries on the Rockit site. I guess no news is good news, but still. If they planned on opening this ride within the next two months, you'd think we'd actually have some solid information about an opening date, or just general info on the elements/special features of this coaster or maybe even some kind of official video at the very least. Here's to hoping this week brings some news, and good news at that!

Keep in mind that PCL aren't the only ones involved in this project. The coaster itself is being constructed by Mosley Erecting, and the station building is by BRPH Architects. So perhaps it isn't entirely PCL's fault.

In the past few days those barrels have been replaced with actual steel columns. Hogsmede construction has gone vertical, woohoo.