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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.

See, there we go. A very simple/logical explanation for the lack of the crane that pretty much makes my entire post irrelevant. Let's hope this is the case!

From first hand reports. Yes, they're working on the station everyday now, and it's coming together very nicely. No one is worried about/denying that. The issue is the lack of the main crane on property. All the main track work for the ride was completed on the 14th. All that remains now is the lift hill and station track, which as we've seen, has been getting installed recently. But with the lack of the large blue crane, putting up the lift isn't going to be possible, as it's the only crane capable of lifting the track onto the lift tower. So it begs the question, why is the crane gone in the first place? That crane has been on property since December. Even when they took extended breaks between putting up segments in the past, the crane remained on the construction site. So even if they're taking a week or two off from putting up track, why remove the crane? Now, when you take the speculation that there's something wrong with the lift, and throw in the fact that they finished all track work that requires that crane EXCEPT the lift and then promptly removed the crane from their property, it would seem that something's up. There is of course the possibility we're all looking way too deeply into this and nothing is wrong at all. But hey, it's a discussion board and we're discussing what's going on.

Take this however you want, but Universal filed their annual SEC report today, and no where within it is Rockit given it's usual "spring" opening date. Instead, we get general statements like: and a bit more specific:

What happened to the main/really big blue crane? You'd think if they planned on finishing the lift/drop in the near future, it would still be on property. Should we be worried?

I've seen the building in person. It's 82,000sqft according to the building permit filed for it, which, while huge, really isn't THAT huge. For reference, Mummy and Spiderman are roughly 70,000sqft, and ET is roughly 60,000sqft. I'm not saying it's impossible for there to be several attractions in there, but given the type of attraction, I'd imagine they'd want it to take up as much room as possible and for it to have a fairly elaborate queue and possibly pre-shows. But at this point it's really anyone's guess. I just don't see them squeezing all the stuff King K. was mentioning into the building.

You WILL be able to go inside the Castle. From what I've heard and what's been mentioned by Uni, It'll have the Staircases, Great Hall, Classrooms, the new ride under the Castle, the House Dorms, and a Magic SFX show. Oh, the the Magiquest system. I doubt it. The castle is just a prop structure on the roof. It even says in the City of Orlando filing that the castle is an "unoccupied prop structure", much like Hagrid's Hut. And the only thing inside the 'big box' is probably going to be the Kuka based ride and its queue. The ride's queue might bring you past the staircases and dorms and whatnot, but I highly doubt there's a SFX show and a magiquest system going into that building, it's not nearly big enough. But hey, I could be wrong.

Yes, it was taken off. You could see a worker welding/doing stuff to the 'stub' (I'm just going to call it what you called it ) on the ground the other day, prepping it for being put back up.

No, it most certainly does not clear the building. When you're in the twister queue, you can clearly see how much it overlaps the back section of the building, and the front envelope, as well, doesn't clear that pole. As jedimaster said, there's definitely still work to be done on that fly-through. You're right though, it isn't fail, just hasn't been finished yet.

There weren't any test runs at all today. The reach envelopes are still on the track, that should be a dead giveaway that test runs haven't occurred yet... But I can't wait until they do!

Well, you left out the last sentence in that paragraph which probably gives you the best available answer to your question: "It is suspected that Disney does not allow its vendors to use them as references." Not sure what else it could be, really.