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Volcano Bay Rehabs - Dates are not guaranteed to be 100% accurate as refurbishments are subject to change.
 
Maku and Puihi Raft Slides - NOW CLOSED through Feb. 12
**The TapuTapu System Was Retired on Oct. 1, 2025**
Entire Park To Be Closed from Oct. 26, 2026 through to March 24, 2027
 

Click Here to read the full Screamscape Review of Halloween Horror Nights 33

Click Here to read the full Screamscape review of Halloween Horror Nights 29

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General Resort News - (1/10/2026) Universal Orlando has posted the dates for Halloween Horror Nights 2026. According to the official event page, look for this year’s event to take place on select nights from August 28 through to Nov. 1, 2026. The August 28th launch date actually kinda pushes the opening of HHN 2026 up a week prior than before, so instead of opening at the start of the busy Labor Day Weekend, it will actually be opening the Friday of the week before since Labor Day won’t fall until Sept. 7th this year.
 
    (12/30/2025) Universal Orlando has confirmed the dates for the 2026 Mardi Gras: International Flavors of Carnival event will take place from February 7 through April 4th, 2026. The concert schedule has not yet been announced however, so stay tuned.
 
    (12/25/2025) Blooloop reports that Universal Orlando is seeking bids to construct an underground tunnel project. If this sounds familiar, it was reported back in July 2025 that Elon Musk’s “The Boring Company” might be in talks to build just such an underground transit tunnel project in Orlando, similar to the Las Vegas Loop project, to move tourists through the busy I-Drive corridor area. In fact… there was a sub-rumor at that time that the company may have actually been in talks with Universal at the time about how to connect the main Universal Orlando campus to the new Epic Universe expansion site.
    According to the update from Blooloop, Universal’s “Shingle Creek Transit & Utility Community Development District” had issued a bid for offers on August 18th “to provide, design, build, operation and maintenance services” for a new “point-to-point innovative transportation” project. They say that the bidding closed on October 1st, but Universal has not yet chosen a firm for the project, though the District has their next meeting scheduled for Jan. 14th, 2026, where the topic could possibly be up for discussion.
 
    (10/25/2025) Good news for Universal Orlando fans, the resort has now announced new 2026 multi-day / multi-park ticket options that will give guests complete access to all of the Universal Orlando parks, including the new Epic Universe park. Tickets that include “park-to-park” access on the same day will allow guests to bounce between all three of the major theme parks in the same day if they wish.
    This is a change from the 2025 multi-day tickets that allowed guests only to visit Epic Universe for 1 day maximum by itself, and then depending on your option you could visit the rest of the parks as much as you wanted for the remaining days, but park hopping involving Epic Universe was not allowed.
    Please note that 2-Day tickets will still only allow access to Epic Universe for just 1 of the two days, but to include multi-day and park-to-park access that includes Epic Universe you will need to purchase at least a 3-Day 2026 ticket.

???? - New Universal Pop-Culture Celebration Event - Rumored To Be In Development -
    (12/12/2025) Universal Orlando appears to be making plans to push out a Universal Fan Fest Nights event of their own, not unlike what we saw happen at the Hollywood park last year. The Hollywood park is already developing the second season for their Universal Fan Fest Nights, while this week Universal Orlando is said to have served up an online survey asking fans questions about a possible similar concept for the east coast.
   One big difference however is that unlike how the Hollywood park event is an extra ticket / after hours special event, not unlike Halloween Horror Nights, the proposal in the survey for Universal Orlando mentions that their event would be an all-day affair, something included with general admission and open to annual passholders. That approach isn’t entirely new, as the concept for Universal Fan Fest originated as a way to take Japan’s very popular “Universal Cool Japan” event to the US. The Japanese event is a seasonal all-day event that essentially takes over the park with numerous attraction overlays that take the place of some other attractions. For example, a special limited-time 4D theater film may be shown instead of something commonplace like Shrek 4D for several months out of the year. The park’s Space Fantasy indoor spinning dark coaster rarely ever runs in the way it was built to run, because it is always being used for special attractions almost year-round for Universal Cool Japan events that allow guests to ride the attraction wearing VR headgear instead. So with all that in mind, it was actually the Hollywood park that decided to change things up and try out hosting their Fan Fest event as a special ticket night event to create a sort of spring-time revenue generator of Halloween Horror Nights for the park.
    Other parts of the survey go on to ask about many different IPs, starting with if you have heard of them or not, and of the ones you knew, they want to know how you felt about each one. (Like, Neutral, Dislike, Hate, etc…) I’m not going to list them all, but most of the concepts you could possibly think about were mentioned, including some from Universal Japan, so there are a number of anime concepts in the mix, along with some other ideas that we haven’t really seen in Hollywood or Japan yet.
    In the end, the survey seems to throw everything out the window and gives your a hard list of IPs that may be used, and wants your opinions on them, and if they are good enough to travel to Orlando for the event, or a total turn off that you can’t stand. Having seen numerous surveys like this in the past, I can say that it isn’t uncommon for different survey takers to be given entirely different final lists, so right now I can’t say if this is an actual final IP list or just the one that was given in the survey sent my way by a reader. That said… the list included Universal park tentpoles like Jurassic Park and Harry Potter… a little bit of fantasy service with Lord of the Rings instead of Dungeons & Dragons like Hollywood used, a little bit of Nintendo fan-service by offering Legend of Zelda and Pokemon, and then a little anime style content with Avatar: The Last Airbender and Spirited Away.
    My take is that I don’t think this is a final list in any way and just something used in this particular survey, as there is a bit of overlap along with some questionable inclusions. While Spirited Away is a Studio Ghibili production from Japan, many associate it with Disney, who purchased the North American distribution rights for the film at the time, and even slapped the Disney logo on the front at the time. For that reason alone, it would be a bit odd to include it here. For the “fantasy” style elements, while they are different there is a bit of genre overlap by including Zelda and Lord of the Rings at the same event, rather than something from another genre like how Star Trek and Back to the Future were presented at the Hollywood event. Jurassic and Potter are also interesting, but already present at the parks and wouldn’t really present a major draw as they aren’t really offering anything new or different.
    Still… the end result is that we do now have a clear message from Universal Orlando that this is an endeavor that they are pursuing to add to the Orlando parks in the not so distant future. 
 
    (3/1/2025) Universal Orlando fans may be wondering just when the Universal Fan Fest Nights event might be coming to Orlando? As you may recall, Screamscape has been talking about this pending event for the past few years, as it was my understanding that the event was first picked as something for Universal Orlando, inspired by the Universal Cool Japan events that have been wildly popular overseas for years now.
    I’m not entirely surprised by the fact that the first Fan Fest Nights event will take place at the Hollywood park, mainly because Universal Orlando has been so incredibly busy preparing itself for the launch of Epic Universe in 2025, and I’m sure there are other projects waiting in the wings for the other parks in the years to follow. Launching a brand new theme park is no easy feat, let alone one in Orlando, so I’m thinking they simply opted to wait until at least 2026 or 2027 to launch an Orlando version of Fan Fest Nights. (Assuming the Hollywood version is a success)
    If you need any more convincing, check your email, as a survey invitation has been going around for the past week or so, asking guests to compare and rank their favorite live action, animated, and video game IPs. Included in the mix are IPs that you’ll recognize from Universal’s current vaults, items in use at the parks already, new things coming to Epic Universe, new IPs we know are already part of Fan Fest Nights in Hollywood, but it also is asking you to compare which of these you like compared to a large number of other IPs that we’ve never seen at Universal before. One thing that I found interesting was comparisons being asked for to gauge public opinions between more well known American animation properties, like Shrek and How To Train Your Dragon up against some popular Japanese anime properties that have been huge hits for the Japanese parks, like Attack on Titan or One Piece. There are also comparisons to see if potential guests might like more Nintendo properties to be used at a possible future event, or would you rather see more modern game IPs like Halo or Call of Duty?
    We’ve also heard some fun rumors that surveys done in Hollywood to judge how the west coast guests showing interest in the IPs being used at first Universal Fan Fest Nights are being ranked. According to some early rumors, upper management was surprised in some of these surveys, as there is said to be much higher interesting in the non Universal IPs being brought into that park for the event, such as Star Trek, Dungeons and Dragons and even One Piece than there is for some established park IPs like Super Nintendo World or even Back To The Future, which may be why we’ve seen a last second addition of Wicked character meet & greets added to the Hollywood event. Of course, even if you see it in a survey, it doesn’t mean it will come, as they cast a rather wide net of properties to use in this survey, including some that I wouldn’t think would go over well, and others that were surprising to hear about, such as Amazon Prime’s “The Boys” series.

   
    (8/24/2024) The Universal FanFest special event now confirmed to only be at the Hollywood park in 2025, but this does not mean that Orlando is to be left out entirely. With the origin of the event plans centered around being added to the Orlando resort, which is going to be busy enough in 2025 with the launch of Epic Universe, I believe we will see the special event added to the Orlando resort a year or two later if it is a success in Hollywood.
 
    (1/27/2024) With the return of the Ghostbusters IP to the silver screen, it appears that Universal has also taken a keen interest in bringing the franchise back into the theme parks. Long time guests of Universal Studios Florida will fondly remember that Ghostbusters was a Day-1 attraction for the theme park when it first opened in 1990 with the Ghostbusters Spooktacular live action special effects show. The former attraction space was later remodeled into the Twister attraction for many years and has now become the Race Through New York with Jimmy Fallon, many guests have been wanting to see the Ghostbusters brought back to the park in one form or another. In fact, back when Universal was development a theme park for Dubai, that unrealized park’s New York area would have featured a Ghostbusters themed interactive dark ride. (Fun fact: the land would have also featured a copy of the Incredible Hulk coaster, but with a Men In Black theme instead, with the launch tunnel propped up on a giant crashed UFO…)
    Back to the subject at hand, it according to an article posted by GhostbustersNews.com it seems Universal has purchased the pieces of a 1959 Cadillac from a classic vehicle collector with the goal of creating a new ECTO-1 star vehicle. The vehicle was previously cut in half for display, with the front half already having been shipped to Orlando and the back half to arrive soon. The vehicle pieces in question are not the exact “Miller-Meteor” model of car used for the original ECTO-1 in the movie, but should be similar enough to allow for Universal to custom create their own version of ECTO-1 for the theme park.
    The better question is… just what does Universal have planned that they would need a new ECTO-1? While the parks have always had a collection of movie-replica star-vehicles on display, they were typically limited to vehicles attached to the IPs of current attractions, with the exception of a few Back to the Future themed vehicles that remain on display. While it would be nice to see a new Ghostbusters themed attraction in the theme parks, there are no short-term plans to do so from what I’m told. Maybe long-term, but they’ve got to get Epic Universe up and running first.
    So what else could this be for? Lets just back several months to a story I posted about Universal planning a new Pop-Culture Celebration Fan-Fest event for the resort. The idea was to create another annual celebration event to fit into the calendar between Mardi Gras and the Summer season, taking inspiration from the “Universal Cool Japan” events. Instead of video game and manga themed attraction, Universal Orlando would revisit popular icons and IPs from their own past attractions slate such as Beetlejuice, Jaws, Back to the Future… and yes… Ghostbusters. One such element that was rumored for this very event would see Ghostbusters face-characters introduced to roam sections of the park with an ECTO-1 replica.
    It definitely sounds like something fun is in the works!
 
    (9/16/2023) Consider this a long term rumor about a concept that was in development by Universal to create another popular festival style event at Universal Studios Florida to take place sometime in the late spring following the Mardi Gras event until the start of the Summer season in June.
    Currently the Universal Orlando resort has a pretty stacked slate of projects to fill their calendars. Following the busy summer season they’ve got Halloween Horror nights taking over all of September and October, the annual Christmas holiday events in both parks running from mid November through to New Years, followed by Mardi Gras in early to mid spring. According to the long term rumors from Screamscape sources, the parks may be looking to fill that last gap between Spring Break and Summer, and the early inspiration for this may have come from Japan.
    Over the past several years Universal Studios Japan has put on a series of successful events featuring temporary attractions and displays throughout the park under the “Universal Cool Japan” event banner. The event celebrates an ever changing slate of Japanese Pop Culture icons including live action monsters like Godzilla, popular anime characters, Japanese video game series worlds and characters, and even the occasional musical performer. Universal Cool Japan blends a bit of digital fantasy and the wacky worlds of anime with a touch of Kaijui and horror influence to create a mega event all of their own that has developed a strong following.
    According to my sources, Universal Orlando is looking to create their own such event that could premier as early as Late Spring 2024, but will do so by creating one made up entirely of American themed pop-culture themes, including some rumored throwbacks to Universal’s own film and theme park history. The popularity of the annual Tribute Stores in the park over the past few years has served as a test of sorts to determine things that really are popular with Universal guests.
    While I don’t know everything that Universal has up their sleeve for this proposed event, the idea is to bring back some interesting iconic characters and themes, not only from Universal’s back catalog, but some themes that were once popular parts of the early Universal Orlando experience. Early concepts talked about bringing some characters back to the park for live performances, such as Bettlejuice’s Graveyard Revue on a stage, or to have the Ghostbusters roaming the park in Ecto 1. Anyone else remember the live street performance where the Ghostbusters would chase down Bettlejuice who in return would possess them and make them dance to songs like “Day-O”? How would you feel about the chance to experience a return of Back To The Future: The Ride? Just not inside the original attraction building (The Simpsons) but instead a temporary setup using the simulator bays of Race Through New York?  Want to experience the terror of Jaws in a new throw-back attraction? While Universal can’t bring back the old Amity Island area, I’ve heard it has been pitched to re-program the Fast & Furious immersive tunnel scene to create a virtual shark attack sequence.
    The end result is to create a special event that is a fun throwback to celebrate popular characters and film characters from the past that once had a tie to Universal Studios theme parks in one way or another. This could also result in the displaying of a lot of classic vehicles from Universal attractions making appearances for guest photos, which is something Universal has always done well with long-term displays of vehicles like the BTTF Delorean, Jurassic Park jeeps, the Blues Brothers squad car, Mystery Machine and more. I’ve already mentioned Ecto 1, but what about some fun 80’s Universal throwback vehicles like KITT or the A-Team van or a little Miami Vice vs Fast X? It’s all for fun… but with Universal Creative being heavily focused on finishing up the Epic Universe theme park by 2025, it sounds like Universal’s live entertainment creatives may be ready to try something new and fresh in the near future.

2027 - Volcano Bay Refurbishment - (5/1/2025) Along with the announcement that Volcano Bay was going to discontinue to use of their Tapu Tapu wearable device October 1st, 2025 it was also mentioned that Volcano Bay will be closed for several months over the winter of 2026 in order to perform numerous maintenance projects as well as inspections and so on. Volcano Bay will close on Oct. 26, 2026 and apparently not reopen again until sometime around March 24, 2027. This does may be wonder if we might see some changes made to some of the attractions, or perhaps even the introduction of a new attraction within this time frame.