The other day, you may have seen our aerial construction update featuring construction photos of Avatarland at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. Today, once again, I have another aerial construction update, but this time featuring photos of the entire Universal Orlando Resort.

Here, you will find aerial photos of their new waterpark, Volcano Bay, which is set to open in 2017, their new for 2016 attraction, Skull Island: Reign of Kong, along with aerial photos of their 2017 attractions, Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon and Fast and Furious: Supercharged, and even more!

Let’s start with shots of the main Universal Studios park where Fast and Furious: Supercharged and Race Through New York Starring Jimmy Fallon are under construction.

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To start, here is an aerial view of the majority of the Universal Studios park. Although you can see construction going on in the top left of the image for the Fast and Furious attraction, I think the most notable feature of the image is KidZone. Rumors are pointing to the section of the park in the bottom center of the image becoming Nintendoland in the coming years. I simply want to highlight the YUGE (I had to do it) amount of land the outdated section of the park occupies. It will be interesting to see what replaces its rides in the future.

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Across the lake, the old Disaster plot is cleared and seems like it will begin turning into Fast and Furious: Supercharged soon. Although before I did not think this ride was behind schedule, it certainly looks like it is from the sky. I expect a late 2017 if not 2018 opening date at the rate of which construction appears to be going.

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Above are a few more shots of the construction. It appears they are continuing their excavation of land.

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On the front side of the old Twister show building, not much appeared to be going on. A new building is underway on the left side, but otherwise there is nothing much visible besides the building’s hollow shell/

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On the other hand, inside the building construction has begun. There is a concrete truck visible in the pictures, and a wooden structure inside the building that looks like a frame of something. The other day, while riding Hollywood Rip Ride Rockit, it appeared that concrete had been poured on this frame or nearby. Clearly, the new Jimmy Fallon ride is moving along.

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In CityWalk, there was not much occurring with the exception of the former NBA City building. It seems that it is in preliminary stages of its conversion into the new Toothsome Chocolate Factory.

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Now, let’s move over to Islands of Adventure. Above is a view of the majority of the park.

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In one corner of the park, the finishing touches are being added to Skull Island: Reign of Kong.

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Although not much was visible on the outside of the building, inside they are going through the attraction’s testing phases.

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On the other side of the park, in Marvel Superhero Island, the reconstruction of the Incredible Hulk Coaster continued. On the day of our flight, they were working on the ride’s cobra roll. Since then, the Zero-G Roll and the rest of the Cobra Roll have been installed, with only a few track segments left to be added.

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Another Universal Orlando construction project, the Loews Sapphire Falls Resort, is nearing completion. The building itself is very close to completion while the grounds surrounding are being worked on. The hotel is really starting to take shape though.

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Although there are a lot of exciting new attractions being built at Universal Orlando, by far the most exciting is the Volcano Bay waterpark. Here are the pieces of the slides which are sitting next to the Universal owned Wet n’ Wild waterpark.

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Although Volcano Bay is still in an early construction phase, you can see where things likely will be going already. The large structure to the right of the image is almost definitely the base of the volcano. There are several instances of what appears to be footers or some other form of structure for slides around the volcano and what most likely will be other slide towers on the left side of the image.

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The waterpark is going to border the Cabana Bay resort, which is set to expand soon. From what I know, the expansion is probably going to be in some of the cleared land next to the towers visible. Below is an overview of the entire Volcano Bay construction site.

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When you look closely at the Volcano, it appears that there may be slides within. You can see columns on top of the concrete structure and surrounding the Volcano. Also, the steel beams appear to be what the Volcano will be shaped around.

Below are more close up images of  the construction site. There are numerous instances of what look like foundations and structures of buildings along with several pieces of pipe, concrete, and steel scattered throughout. The waterpark has a lot of work left before its 2017 opening, but it is certainly starting to take shape.

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What do you think of the construction going on all around the Universal Orlando Resort? Do you see anything that we may have missed? Let us know in the comments and be sure to follow Theme Parks and Travels on FacebookTwitter, and Instagram for more information! You can also subscribe to our YouTube Channel! Don’t forget to give our west coast correspondent, Michael, a follow on Twitter and Instagram! You can also subscribe to us on Apple News by searching “Theme Parks and Travels” in the app!


1 Comment

John · March 23, 2016 at 11:21 am

Nice photos!

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