Universal Orlando Resort just had a big grand opening with the new Minions Land at Universal Studios Florida, but most of the time, for theme parks to make something new, they need to replace something old. With everything new that UOR has done recently something has had to close, and we’ve now seen another closure in the parks as the Jurassic Park climbing wall at Islands of Adventure has been removed.
It’s a small attraction removal, but one that is probably not that big a shock, as a similar climbing wall, located in the New York section of Universal Studios Florida closed earlier this year. WDWNT confirmed the removal of the Jurassic Park wall, so it appears that climbing walls are just done at Universal Orlando.
The Islands of Adventure wall was located near the Camp Jurassic kids' play area. Use of the climbing walls required an additional cost beyond park entry, which was $15 per attempt at the time of the closure. Perhaps the walls simply weren’t generating enough revenue to keep them open and staffed, and that’s the reason for the closure. There are plenty of other places to do that sort of climbing, and so many other things that you can only do at Universal Orlando.
It’s also possible that there were potential liability issues that UOR decided not to deal with since injury on the walls is at least possible. There may be plans to replace them with something, but the footprints of these walls were fairly small, so we shouldn’t expect anything too grand to take their place.
It’s possible that we could still see a climbing wall show up in the resort. A new Dreamworks-themed land is currently under construction, which could certainly see something like this added to it. The new land is taking over where the old Universal Studios Florida KidZone was located, and so one assumes it will have an area where kids can run and jump and climb around. Maybe it will include something like this.
The loss of climbing walls probably won’t ruin anybody’s trip to Universal Orlando Resort, though they do add to what is becoming a long list of closures throughout the parks in recent months. In addition to the previously mentioned KidZone, which will reopen as the Dreamworks land next year, Islands of Adventure also recently closed Poseidon's Fury. What will be replacing that has yet to be announced, but it will surely be a significant attraction, though it may still be years away.
And all that is in addition to the fact that UOR is building an entire third gate as we speak. Maybe they took down the climbing walls at Islands of Adventure because they needed the parts to install them someplace at the new Epic Universe park. It’s not the craziest thing that could happen.
