Universal confirms King Kong's animatronic is damaged, and Reign of Kong has no reopening date
Skull Island: Reign of Kong closed without warning in late August. Guests noticed fast. The attraction wasn't on Universal's published refurbishment schedule, and it stayed dark through Labor Day and into September. Rumors filled the gap: a fire, a mechanical failure, something worse than routine wear.
Universal broke its silence to Attractions Magazine this week. A spokesperson confirmed the ride's massive King Kong animatronic sustained damage during routine maintenance and is now undergoing repairs. The statement didn't say how the damage happened or how bad it is, and Universal hasn't given a reopening date.
The trackless dark ride opened in 2016, bringing King Kong back to Orlando nearly 14 years after Kongfrontation closed at Universal Studios Florida. It's been quietly scaled back before: the outdoor temple-gate sequence went offline for two years starting in 2023, and Universal dropped the ride's 3D glasses in 2024. This time the fix centers on the finale's showpiece animatronic, the figure the whole ride builds toward.
A Boston Dynamics veteran just launched a company to put walking, responsive robots where animatronics used to stand
Dynamic Creatures came out of stealth this week with a pitch aimed straight at this industry: mobile character robots that walk through a room, read the moment, and respond to one guest at a time, instead of running a fixed show for a crowd.
The company was founded by Marc Theermann, Boston Dynamics' former chief strategy officer, and Farbod Farshidian, a robotics researcher who worked on agile movement for Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid. Dynamic Creatures is now Boston Dynamics' official partner for entertainment and hospitality, building character experiences on Boston Dynamics hardware alongside fully custom robots. The company says it's already working with a major theme park and a retailer.
The platform behind it is called SnowJay: robotics, perception, and behavior control bundled into one system so a character can navigate a crowded room and adjust on the fly, rather than follow a scripted path. Theermann draws a clear line against a stationary animatronic, which performs for whoever happens to be standing in front of it. A Dynamic Creatures robot is built to notice a specific kid, stop, and play along. Deployments on existing robot platforms could reach parks within months. Whether guests actually want a robot walking up to them, instead of a costumed performer or a figure safely behind glass, is the question the first pilots will have to answer.
Jurassic Park River Adventure is stripped down to its animatronic frames, new aerial photos show
Jurassic Park River Adventure has been closed since January 5, and new aerial photos from photographer @bioreconstruct, published this week by Disney Food Blog, show how far the teardown has gone. Ultrasaur Lagoon sits drained, with a dinosaur animatronic partially reassembled beside the empty ride path. Stegosaur Springs is largely emptied out too, its animatronic getting touch-up paintwork, and the panels that spray guests at the bottom of the big drop sit exposed.
The scale of the work fed months of speculation, reported by Disney Fanatic, that Universal was quietly rebranding the 1999 ride into Jurassic World: The Ride, the way Universal Studios Hollywood did in 2019. Universal has never addressed that rumor directly, but the photos point the other way. The work reads like a restoration of the existing Jurassic Park theming, animatronics included, rather than a rebuild around the newer film franchise.
A reopening is targeted for November 20. For an attraction whose audio-animatronic dinosaurs have been running since 1999, largely outdoors and partly over water, a teardown this thorough was probably overdue. Twenty-seven years of Florida humidity is hard on show systems built to roar and lunge on cue.