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Park News - (4/22/08) According to Universal’s website, Grinchmas will return to IOA this year from December 5th, 2008 to January 1st, 2009.
  (3/12/08) Islands of Adventure fans will want to take notice of this little treasure discovered on Ebay. A set of proposal documents full of descriptions and concept art for an entire Batman themed island proposed for Islands of Adventure, complete with a stunt show and a suspended Bat-Jet roller coaster ride and many other surprises. Fortunatly you don’t have to buy it to get a taste as the auction has posted numerous pictures showing off various text and images included in the book to wet your appetite.
  (12/26/07) After an 18 month hiatus, IOA Central is now back with new coverage of Grinchmas. Also: future park guests make a note - according to the official Universal Orlando calendar page, Popeye’s & Bluto’s Bilge-Rat Barges will be closed for rehab from 1/6/08 to 2/2/08.
  (12/17/07) A ton of photos and a video of Grinchmas have been added to Universal-Excitement.com.
  (12/12/07) We’ve heard back from several parks guests who have confirmed that Ripsaw Falls is now letting guests sit in the front seat of the logs. However, we’ve also received about half a dozen complaints from people commenting about how cramped the logs, worries from tall folks about not fitting, and the painful and slow process of loading / unloading. It seems your “average park guest” is just not able to quickly contort like a Cirque Du Soleil performer just to take a spin on a simple log ride.
  (12/5/07) Univesal Orlando reports that Mannheim Steamroller has created the musical score for this year’s new “How the Grinch Stole Christmas” show. The show will feature six songs recorded by Mannheim Steamroller, with new arrangements of “You’re A Mean One, Mr Grinch” and “Where Are You, Christmas?” as well as a new original song created just for the show called “Christmas Chorale” written by Michael Roddy (show director) and accompanied by Mannheim Steamroller.

2008 - Nothing new this year.
 

Late 2009 - The Wizarding World of Harry Potter - (5/12/08) It seems the Universal legal team was quick to jump on the American Scenic website about removing their Harry Potter graphics. In only a matter of hours their Harry Potter page was pulled entirely. Fortunately, someone managed to save a copy of it and has reposted the artwork once again to Imageshack. I’m not sure how long this link will last, so see it while you still can.
  According to one reader, based on the scenes shown in the artwork, the ride itself may be based on the Chamber of Secrets storyline, which included an encounter with giant spiders, a Wizard Chess scene and culminates with an encounter with the Basilisk, a serpent looking creature.
  I’ve also heard a little more dirt about the ride system itself. For starters, we know about all we really need to know about the Kuka robot arms that will be providing the brute strength for the ride system. Riders will be seated in a long “bench” of seats, rumored to hold six at a time, and mounted to the business end of a KR 1000 Titan model Kuka arm. The Titan arm is rated to toss around payloads of 1,000 kg (2,200 pounds or 1.1 Tons!) with great ease. Then the Kuka arms will be mounted to one of twelve mobile base units that will scoot around a track system that is said to look fairly similar to the track system used on The Adventure’s of Spider-Man. Ironically enough, you can see a great picture of Spider-Man’s track system posted to American Scenic.
  In other Harry Potter news, one of our readers has mentioned a few things that apparently author JK Rowling has mentioned in interviews about the Universal project. In addition to mentioning that there would also be a ride for young children to enjoy in the area, she also mentioned that there would be two state of the art rides in the land, one of which being the new ride system based on the Kuka robot arm. She did give a rough name for one attraction though… something along the lines of Hogwart’s Introduction To Magic that would be some kind of demonstration showing off the effects of various different magic spells.
  (5/9/08) Harry Potter fans will want to take a careful look at a page I came across on the American Scenic website that clearly shows off all new concept artwork for the new Potter dark ride. The artwork in the upper right corner is very interesting since you can pretty much see that the ride vehicle is a simple row of seats that we assume is attached to the Kuka robot arm. Passing through the “red” section it looks like the rides pass by a large Spider in a cave setting before venturing out into the woods. Meanwhile the lower left corner seems to indicate a scene with giant chess pieces and nearby another piece of art showing off