When Is Universal Orlando Going to Update This Nearly Abandoned Land?!

The Universal Orlando Resort has been evolving nonstop over the last 15 years. From the 2010 opening of the revolutionary original Wizarding World of Harry Potter to the 2025 unveiling of the game-changing Epic Universe theme park, the complex has undergone significant changes at a rapid pace.

This makes it all the more surprising that the Universal has let a once massive theme park land sit essentially abandoned for over a decade: The Lost Continent.

In the early 1990s, both Universal and Disney were planning the next theme parks at their Central Florida resorts: Islands of Adventure and Animal Kingdom, respectively. In fact, the story of this mostly abandoned Universal land actually starts with Disney.

During the planning and design phases of Animal Kingdom, one of the park’s main planned lands was Beastly Kingdom. The medieval area was planned to be split into two halves based around “good” and “evil.” The “good half of the land would have been built around a walkthrough attraction known as The Quest of the Unicorn. The large maze would have featured numerous “magical” encounters and culminated with an encounter between guests and a “life-size” realistic unicorn animatronic. This side of the land would have also featured a boat ride attraction titled Fantasia Gardens themed around its namesake film.

The “evil” side of Beastly Kingdom was to have been the burnt-out remains of a medieval village, the skyline of which was to be dominated by a larger-than-life ruined castle, completed with the shattered remains of knights scattered about. Said castle would have held the land’s, and arguably the park’s, premier attraction: Dragon’s Tower. The thrill attraction would have used an inverted roller coaster ride system to tell the tale of a group of bats stealing treasure from the evil dragon who lords over the castle and village.

Beastly Kingdom was such a big part of the plan for Animal Kingdom that artwork for the land was heavily used to promote Animal Kingdom prior to the park’s opening. However, due to the ever-escalating budget that the live animal attractions required, Beastly Kingdom was pushed to the second phase of the park’s development in favor of DinoLand U.S.A. So, what does this have to do with Lost Continent?

Well, long-held (and essentially confirmed) rumors in theme park circles maintain that once Beastly Kingdom was pushed back, many of the Imagineers who worked on the land were let go. They quickly moved over to Universal Studios to work on the then-upcoming Islands of Adventure theme park, and brought many of the initial ideas to the land that became Lost Continent.

For example, Lost Continent’s headlining opening day attraction was Dueling Dragons, a dragon-themed inverted coaster which featured a queue that wound through a ruined castle, with the corpses of knights killed by the titular dragons scattered throughout.

In addition to the coaster, Lost Continent initially featured attractions including Poseidon’s Fury (a walkthrough attraction that took guests on a journey to Atlantis) in the ruined lost City section of the land, The Eight Voyage of Sinbad stunt show in the Bazaar section, and the aforementioned Dueling Dragons as well as the smaller Flying Unicorn coaster (opened in 2000), which were featured in the Merlinwood section of the land. The land remained mostly unchanged throughout the park’s first decade, until Universal made a deal to bring a certain Boy Wizard into the fold.

In the mid-2000s, following the collapse of negotiations with Disney, Universal secured the theme park rights to the Harry Potter franchise from Warner Brothers and author JK Rowling. Initially, the company’s plans were for a relatively small retheme of the land, before  pivoting to the full removal of the Merlinswood section of the land, to be replaced by Hogsmeade and Hogwarts Castle, making up the first Wizarding World of Harry Potter.

Dueling Dragons and Unicorn’s Flight initially remained, being rethemed to Dragon Challenge (which eventually closed to make room for Hagrid’s Magical Motorbike Adventure) and Flight of the Hippogriff, respectively.

While the Potter land changed Universal forever — and revolutionized the theme park industry as a whole — Lost Continent has essentially been left to rot since the land’s 2010 opening. The Sinbad show had its last performance in 2018, and Poseidon’s Fury shuttered in 2023. Leaving the land an empty shell with the exception of the Mythos restaurant.

Over the years, there have been several rumored replacements for the land. These have included a further Harry Potter expansion featuring the Shrieking Shack, a Seuss-themed Christmas land, the Lord of the Rings, Willy Wonka,  and Nintendo’s Zelda franchise. However, as of now, nothing has been confirmed and there land is simply sitting, essentially empty in the middle of Islands of Adventure.

It remains to be seen what Universal will do with the disjoined elements of Lost Continent that remain, but one would think it’ll be something that elevates the land to the level of the rest of Islands of Adventure. Stay tuned to AllEars for more on Universal’s evolution.

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What would you like to see happen to the Lost Continent? Let us know in the comments below.

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