The Legend of Dueling Dragons at Islands of Adventure

Creating Universal’s Legendary Twin Coasters

The story of Dueling Dragons had as many twists and turns as the fateful coaster itself.

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Its origins date back to the 1990s when the standalone Universal Studios Florida theme park evolved into a multi-day vacation destination. Universal Orlando’s 650-acre expansion was a significant transformation with hotels, an entertainment district, and—most importantly—a second gate.

However, Universal Orlando was taking a new approach with its next theme park. Instead of another theme park in the style of a movie studio backlot, the second gate would be an immersive escape into fantasy with highly themed lands and high-tech attractions.

Universal Orlando in that past created cinematic dark rides, but its upcoming theme park would have a lineup of story-driven thrill attractions, including a new ride type for the company: roller coasters.

In the early plans, Universal Orlando had a tentative licensing agreement with Warner Bros. to build lands and attractions based on properties such as Looney Tunes and DC Comics. One such attraction was a pair of dueling suspended roller coasters in Gotham City, putting riders in a skyward scrap between Batman and The Penguin.

Reportedly, Warner Bros. pulled out of the project; thus, Universal no longer had the rights to Warner Bros. properties. MCA Planning and Development—now known as Universal Creative—adjusted its plans for the theme park, which became Islands of Adventure.

Discovering The Lost Continent

The park recovered with a few replacement intellectual properties, such as Marvel Comics. Rumors suggest Universal explored the idea of using its own Classic Monsters series in the park as well. However, in place of the Classic Monsters idea, Universal dedicated a land to public domain concepts.

This island, known as The Lost Continent, was based on ancient myths and legends from Grecian, Arabic, and European cultures. The Lost Continent’s show producer, Amelia Gordon, described the public domain theme as a “wonderful palette of freedom,” as opposed to the stricter world of intellectual properties.

“When you do Spider-Man, you have a great deal of information about him. When you want to create some mythic story, you have many choices to make. That’s a wonderful palette of freedom, from a designer’s perspective, but it also means that many, many people can have opinions about what’s going on and it makes the decision-making process more difficult.”
Amelia Gordon, show producer of The Lost Continent, via themeparkcanuck.com, 1999

The Lost Continent would feature a subarea called Merlinwood, themed to the Middle Ages. Merlinwood took inspiration from classic Arthurian legends, particularly the tale of Merlin and Nimue, with light influences from The Once and Future King by 20^th-century author T. H. White—thanks to the park’s senior show writer, Ross Osterman, and the park’s director of creative development, Dale Mason.

For Merlinwood in The Lost Continent, Universal revisited an old ride idea that was far from lost: a dueling suspended roller coaster. On the creative side, the concept was reimagined to fit the Arthurian theme of Merlinwood; instead of the aforementioned Batman concept, the pair of suspended coasters was reworked to have a medieval dragon theme. Riders would take courage by riding on the backs of two flying, dueling dragons.

“Dragons and roller coasters—it’s the perfect combination.”
Amelia Gordon, Total Immersion, 1999

Beastly Rumors

Over time, the theme park community has speculated some attractions and concepts for The Lost Continent were lifted from a canceled Disney project.

During the production of Islands of Adventure, Walt Disney World was also developing a brand-new park in Orlando: Disney’s Animal Kingdom. The park was planned to have a section called Beastly Kingdom, themed to mythical creatures. The E-ticket attraction of Beastly Kingdom was going to be a suspended roller coaster called Dragon’s Tower—an experience in that guests would soar through a crumbling castle ruled by a treasure-obsessed, fire-breathing dragon.

As Animal Kingdom’s budget tightened up, Beastly Kingdom was canceled, never to be built. Some Imagineers who worked on the project were laid off after budget cuts and found work across town at Universal.

If the rumors were to be believed, those former Imagineers supposedly took ideas from the canceled Beastly Kingdom and helped design The Lost Continent; however, important details of this claim have not been verified. Development for The Lost Continent was possibly underway before the former Imagineers joined in the Islands of Adventure project.

The concept of Disney’s dragon-themed roller coaster attraction had broad similarities to Universal’s plans, but it was not an entirely far-fetched idea; Universal’s Creatives likely could’ve imagined the concept of a dragon roller coaster without any knowledge of Beastly Kingdom. Also, Universal’s upcoming dragon roller coaster was not an indoor attraction and had two dueling tracks, unlike Disney’s concept.