Islands of Adventure: A Blue Sky, Armchair Imagineered Build-Out of Universal Orlando’s Storied Second Gate

I know it’s a little bit of a tease, but rather than continuing our grand circle tour to the space just past Seuss Landing, I want to quickly circle back to the other island bordering Port of Entry so we can fill out the “bottom” of this park before getting into new stuff…

Marvel Harbor

Background

When Universal acquired the rights to build theme park attractions themed to Marvel superheroes in the mid-1990s, it was a win-win. Marvel – then a down-on-its-luck comics company with bankruptcy looming – got a percentage of merchandise sales, an ongoing annual licensing fee, and some much-needed cash. Meanwhile, Universal found an easy replacement for the DC Heroes whose licensing for the park had fallen through, plus ironclad exclusivity for using hundreds of Marvel’s heroes in its parks in perpetuity – yes, even after Disney acquired Marvel outright in 2009.

More to the point, though, in this form, the Marvel heroes fit Islands of Adventure’s ethos – a timeless, intergenerational, evergreen cast of characters drawn from a unique genre of literature: comic books. The good of that is that today, Marvel Super Hero Island reads like a hyper-saturated love letter to Stan Lee’s characters as they appear not just in the comics, but in the now-nostalgic Saturday morning cartoons of the ’80s and ’90s. The bad is that Marvel Super Hero Island doesn’t look anything like the prevailing pop culture image of Marvel’s heroes made real by Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe.

The weird result is that Universal holds east-of-the-Mississippi theme park rights to some of the hottest characters in its competitor’s portfolio… but it’s also hamstrung in a legal quandary wherein its version of the heroes exist somewhere between a throwback and a spoof of the ones dominating the box office; a highly-simplified, primary-colored, flat comic book cityscape dominated by huge, ’90s-interpretations of otherwise well-known heroes.

Walt Disney World would kill to be able to host a meet-and-greet with Spider-Man or Captain America. Yet here they are… kind of. There’s lot of Spandex. Lots of unitards. Lots of party store wigs. The heroes come riding out on four-wheelers to a rocking musical score… In other words, Universal has a Marvel superhero-themed land, but it’s neither the Marvel nor the superheroes you’d expect at first glance.

Here’s the thing – I’m actually a Marvel Super Hero Island apologist. I get people’s complaints about it, and sure, I guess it’s only a step or two above Six Flags’ treatment of DC character (a lot of hero names “label-slapped” on bare steel thrill rides and the occasional hyper-pigmented “city” facade on an arcade or hamburger restaurant). But I do like that it’s this sort of intentional time capsule of comic books and Saturday morning cartoons, avoiding the trappings of the “blockbuster” and instead rooting these heroes in an evergreen, literary form…

I don’t know. I probably honestly should’ve been more adventurous and done away with Marvel Super Hero Island altogether. (Universal clearly could pull the trigger on that themselves given how much Disney is likely willing to pay to regain those rights. Universal even seems to have a game plan ready. Remember, Universal Studios Beijing essentially has Super Hero Island, but with a Transformers overlay… which, by the way, I’d sooner die than see applied to Islands of Adventure where Transformers would make zero sense.)

So given that this is a “Blue Sky” build-out where anything can happen, why bother keeping this land? Unsurprisingly, it’s because of the Modern Marvel: The Amazing Adventures of Spider-Man. I don’t know that an Islands of Adventure without that ride could exist. It would be like Disneyland without a Castle. It’s simply one of the best rides of all time, and an absolute anchor for Islands… so much so that I’d rather deal with the limitations of Marvel Super Hero Island than try to design a new land without it. So that’s exactly what I did…

Build-Out

First of all, I went ahead and smoothed this land’s named from “Marvel Super Hero Island” to the much less bulky “Marvel Harbor.” One of the benefits of Marvel’s renewed place in pop culture is that we know Marvel = superheroes. Then, “Island” in this context doesn’t clearly communicate the environment to expect, which, sure, is an island like Manhattan is an island, but I think a Harbor better communicates that we’re in the waterfront district of a city – implying that there’s much more to the city than just the part you and I can get to.

Like I said, I don’t mind the idea that we’re talking about a more timeless, comic book interpretation of the heroes now made most famous as hyper-real, grounded movie characters… but I would pull back the clock a bit to remove some of the ’90s hyper-saturation and instead rooting this land in a ’60s color palate and design aesthetic.

I think it would be good to lose the hyper-pigmented color-gradient paint jobs, swirled metal, and x-treme ’90s fonts in favor of bold, mid-century colors and typefaces. Part of me would like to just get rid of the giant cutout characters altogether, but I do think the area would be a little nondescript without them, so maybe re-designing them to represent the simpler, inked, ’60s character models as opposed to the current variety, which are – like the rest of the land – very ’90s. So with the aesthetics discussed, let’s move on…

So we’ve kind of established that this is still a comic book city and not some hyper-real MCU-style downtown (which Disney would never allow anyway). When it comes to attractions and eateries, I rolled out a pretty extensive reimagining, so let’s just start a walkthrough.

I’ll be honest – I seriously debated removing THE INCREDIBLE HULK COASTER. I get it – that green cobra roll over the lagoon is an icon. The Hulk is probably the most instantly-recognizable roller coaster on Earth. It just feels like an essential part of Islands of Adventure’s DNA. Even as the calibre of the park has risen around it, it feels “okay” that Marvel Super Hero Island has this big, bare, steel coaster thundering around. I’m fine with it!

But I have two major issues with the Hulk.

1. The plaza in front of it is very, very “Six Flags” in the worst way. It’s just such a stark departure from Port of Entry to suddenly be in this misty, expansive, concrete plaza where people are chaotically searching for lockers and there’s a big, barren queue of switchback and just general disorder.
   
2. If we’re being honest, Hulk is probably one of the worst B&M coasters on Earth. I’m not sure how a company so well-known for ultra-smooth, well-paced coasters with “just right” intensity created a ride whose entire second half (out of view of onlookers) is just a meandering, knotted mess of inversions and awkward track transitions. (When the entire Hulk was torn down in 2014 to be rebuilt, I was genuinely shocked that they recreated that second half with no changes.)

To convince myself to keep the ride, I set out to “fix” both.

To solve issue one, I tried to transform the plaza in front of the ride into a mini-land centered on “Banner Labs.” This killed several birds with one stone. First, it allowed me to absorb Cafe 4 – one of two totally forgettable, aesthetically outdated, and bland hamburger eateries in the land – into BANNER TASTE LABS.

I feel like this allows for quick service foods with a playful twist – oversized “Smashed” burgers, enormous serves-four Hulk Fries, Gamma Fizz drinks, etc. served in a white “lab” setting with guests as taste test subjects. Second, I cut the plaza’s size and chaos by containing the ride’s lockers, entrance, and queue in a new, white “laboratory” QUEUE HOUSE labeled “Banner Labs.” Third, this new queue house would also serve to hide a change to the ride itself…

As you can see on my Build-Out plan, I basically redesigned the layout from the place where it circles around the launch tube to the brake run – a ride “new” enough, I call it INCREDIBLE HULK: GAMMA SMASH. I’m not a coaster designer by any means, but my plan is to have the coaster swirl around the launch tube, then “smash” into a hidden showbuilding with the remainder of the ride being enclosed.

The coaster would slalom through green lights and then hit a second rolling launch, diving and twisting through tunnels of green light as guests experience the Hulk-ification process. I also removed all inversions in the second half except for a final corkscrew. That would leave the Incredible Hulk with four inversions (versus its current seven), but a stronger focus on diving turns, overbanks, speed, and more of a “show.”

The result is that we still get the iconic image of the cobra roll over the lagoon, but we improve the entry experience, get a vastly improved restaurant, and basically transform the Hulk itself into a fresh new multi-sensory experience.

On the far side of the island stands THE AMAZING ADVENTURES OF SPIDER-MAN, which, naturally, I wouldn’t change. However, I did make a similar move with Spider-Man in that I added an indoor queue house to contain the extended queue. As it is, the extended queue (which, credit to Spider-Man’s enduring popularity, is often used) is an outdoor corral of switchbacks, which is neither great for guests nor an attractive situation for guests entering from a counterclockwise trip around the park.

I think an easy, obvious form this extended queue would be the printing press of the Daily Bugle, with switchbacks winding around steaming machinery as papers whiz by on conveyer belts, “printing” and “folding” continuously looping papers that would not only provide guests a weather-proof warehouse to wait in, but a pre-pre-show glimpse at the headlines of the Sinister Syndicate, setting up the ride to follow.

Plus, being able to replace that negative queue space with a structure labeled “Daily Bugle” and adorned with print-ads drawn from the Marvel Universe would smarten up that transition into the land from the west. A win-win!

So we’ve got our Hulk area of the Harbor built around Banner Labs, and our Spider-Man mini-land built around the Daily Bugle complex. The stuff in between is now up for grabs.

The area along the water is the easiest to deal with, because it currently contains the Captain America Diner (the land’s other entirely skippable fast food restaurant with no real “place” except a swirled metal ’90s diner with comic characters printed everywhere) and a retail space. I shifted them to the STARK SKYLINE BAR, a lounge space leaning into the small-ish restaurant’s views across the lagoon. The retail space, I transformed into the IRON ARMORY, offering Iron Man gauntlets, blasters, helmets, and other hero gear.

In between the two is a small, pleasant, park-like area. Right now, there’s a central sculpture there of great yellow beams bursting from the ground. (It’s part of a convoluted backstory for the land, involving the landing of a meteor. The yellow sculpture as well as the planters around it and even the concrete along the water’s edge are shaped as if to capture the meteor’s crash and its ensuing clouds of smoke in comic book style.)

I wanted to try to activate this space with something kinetic, and borrowed an idea from my build-out of Disney California Adventure with PALLADIUM PACKS. It’s actually based on the Jet Packs rides at Shanghai Disneyland, which is itself an evolution of the Rocket Jets / Astro Orbitor concept. Rather than placing guests in rockets, though, the Palladium Packs are “floorless,” with guests legs dangling. With glowing Iron Man-esque palladium light-up cores on the back of each, this would be a nice family ride that’s also a step-up in thrill from the One Fish Two Fish ride across the lagoon.

I can appreciate that Super Hero Island was envisioned as the park’s “teen” land and packed exclusively with thrills, but with the newfound popularity of Marvel, I wanted at least one ride with no height requirement (or at least not one derived from thrills). Dr. Doom’s Fear Fall was clearly on the chopping block here. Even though Universal did a fine job wrapping an off-the-shelf S&S tower, this ride is not a headliner and draws obvious (negative) comparisons to Disney’s Twilight Zone Tower of Terror. In other words, while I don’t personally mind it and I do think a drop tower is a good thing to have in this park, Fear Fall drags the park’s needle in the “Six Flags” direction.

So with some reluctance, I transformed the very clever, villainous alley into a lead-up to a forced-perspective, comic book interpretation of the iconic Avengers Tower, brightening up the street and embedding a glowing arc reactor into the plaza before the building.

Beyond it is IRON MAN: ULTRABLAST! A good ole’ fashioned Omnimover-based laser blasting dark ride. Usually, I’m not a huge fan of “interactive” blaster dark rides, but I really felt that my Marvel Harbor needed a no-height-requirement, all-ages way to participate in the Marvel story – and in a ride like this, the “narrative” wouldn’t matter much. Visiting the Avengers Tower and being recruited by Iron Man to blast away invading Ultron Drones just feels like a fun conceit for all ages. It’s not necessarily a headliner, but I don’t think it has to be! It would be a nice balanced supporting ride.

I am not sorry to say that I am pretty strictly anti-arcade. I just feel that a big space being filled with modern, outside-IP arcade games and claw machines is beneath major parks like this. “If you wouldn’t do it in the Wizarding World, don’t do it anywhere” might be too strict of a standard to meet everywhere, but if we’re using a Blue Sky buildout as an opportunity to daydream the best possible form of a park, I can’t just leave a video game arcade.

So instead, I used the sizable real estate of the arcade running parallel to this street for a much needed AVENGERS HQ meet-and-greet space. (I think “If you build it, they will come,” and providing a queued opportunity to meet Spider-Man or Captain Marvel or Iron Man – even in comic book form versus MCU form – would be a winner.)

And so, there you have it! My “Marvel Harbor” is still a comic book cityscape, but pulled back from its ’90s hyper-saturation and swirled metal, and rooted more in the inked and painted style of the ’60s. I also wanted it to be at least a little more “in-universe,” replacing catch-all restaurants with ones that blend into the story. I redistricted the land with a Hulk mini-land, a Spider-Man mini-land, and an Iron Man mini-land, and sacrificed Dr. Doom’s Fear Fall in favor of two family rides.

Diversion: The Lost Continent Situation

Whether or not you’ve ready my in-depth history of the Lost Legend: The Lost Continent, you no doubt know the story… When Universal’s Islands of Adventure opened, the land occupying this northwest corner of the park was The Lost Continent, an original creation borrowing from ancient myth and legend. The Lost Continent was itself sub-divided into what Disney could call three “neighborhoods”:

• The Lost City, containing the Mythos restaurant and the Declassified Disaster: Poseidon’s Fury and thereby based on Greek mythology;
• Sinbad’s Bazaar, a Middle Eastern plaza based on the stories of Sinbad the Sailor from One and One Nights, including the Mystic Fountain and the Eighth Voyage of Sinbad stunt show;
• Merlinwood, a Medieval village borrowing from Arthurian legend, containing the Enchanted Oak Tavern restaurant, the Dueling Dragons entwined inverted coasters, and – after early reviews suggested the park didn’t have enough for kids – the Flying Unicorn roller coaster.

As you well know by nature of being the kind of person who’s made it this far in this feature, the original Wizarding World of Harry Potter opened in 2010, officially replacing Merlinwood. Given that the redressed village of Hogsmeade practically printed money, an expansion of Potter’s presence was all but assured, and most people would’ve bet money that the rest of the Lost Continent (by then reduced to a stunt show and special effects show) would be quickly bulldozed to make way for a Wizarding World expansion.

Instead, 2014’s Diagon Alley opened at Universal Studios (a very clever play on the mirroring of the two parks – Islands with its fantastical, enchanted, snow-capped village, and the Studio with the grounded, urban, “real-world” Diagon Alley matching its ethos). The Lost Continent was spared. But for what?

The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad closed forever in 2018, leaving the massive, custom-built stunt show stadium empty and unlikely to find a similarly Middle-Eastern show to inhabit it. (Such is the danger of immersive parks, where built-in theming can be as much a hinderance as a boon.) Today, Sinbad’s Bazaar is essentially just a corridor of Middle Eastern storefronts you pass through to get to Hogsmeade.

Likewise, Poseidon’s Fury closed in 2020, with most sources feeling fairly certain that the pandemic had finally been the death knell for the last IP-free thing at Universal Orlando. Poseidon’s Fury instead re-opened in 2022, but c’mon. In a landlocked park, there’s no question that the remains of the Lost Continent are an obvious expansion pad for the park, offering a combined 7 acres on which to do something more than an empty stadium and a cult classic (but admittedly, not good) walkthrough attraction.

What I chose to do with that seven acres might surprise you…