by Danielle Plato
On May 22, 2025, Universal’s newest theme park, Epic Universe, opened to the public. A long-awaited addition to Universal Orlando Resort, this theme park was ushered in by months of intense marketing. This marketing push even resulted in the closure of the Universal Studios Legacy store on CityWalk. This Legacy store, which highlighted some of guests’ favorite old-time attractions that have gone to that big theme park in the sky, was a beloved addition to the CityWalk retail scene. Ultimately, we had to say goodbye to it, as Universal sought to use that space to showcase its upcoming theme park. And thus, the Epic Universe Preview center was born.
Now, if you were born mid-to-late ’90s or later, chances are you don’t remember the last time Universal opened a new park. Islands of Adventure opened in 1999 to great fanfare, joining its existing sister property, Universal Studios Florida, and the brand-new CityWalk retail space to create the Universal Orlando Resort campus that we know and love today.
But even before that grand opening, Universal Orlando Resort was hard at work, pouring just as much into the marketing for its new park back in the 90s as it did this go around for Epic Universe, and while many people may not remember it, Islands of Adventure also had its own preview center back in the day.
The Original Preview Experience
The Islands of Adventure Preview Center, which was open from 1997 to 1999, found its home in the New York section of the park, adjacent to the now-defunct Kongfrontation, with its entrance where the lockers for The Revenge of the Mummy are located. Think of the space they use for the Halloween Horror Nights Tribute Store now: that’s where this Preview Center would take you.
And it needed all that space! Unlike the Epic Universe Preview Center, which is one enormous space decked out with different portals and merchandise with the park’s scale model in the center, the Islands of Adventure Preview Center allowed guests to walk through themed rooms, each one dedicated to a different land and decorated with the same passion and elaborate design as any modern-day tribute store.
A Passport to Adventure
With international travel being the big theme in Islands of Adventure’s overarching story, guests were initially welcomed into the Port of Entry preview room, just as they experience the Port of Entry when they first walk into the park today! This room is where guests would pick up their passports: a series of cardstock pamphlet pages emblazoned with the iconography and logos from each land (though some of it, like the Islands of Adventure logo on the front, is outdated today). Guests could then take this passport to the various rooms within the preview center, find the stamping station, and get each page stamped with the land’s logo to complete their journey through the Islands of Adventure.
Each land at Islands of Adventure was given its own uniquely-designed room, with concept art, dioramas, impressive set pieces and projection work, and even Neon and UV Blacklight effects in the Marvel Superhero Island room. This allowed guests to traverse through a truncated version of the new theme park, witnessing models, previewing rides and other attractions that would be debuting along with the park, and getting to see some of the world-class theming that Universal Orlando Resort is known for today, all from the comfort of Universal Studios Florida.
The effects used in the rooms varied, with each room having its own style and visual design, much like the lands themselves. From the dark and foreboding aura of The Lost Continent’s room, which played heavily on the darker aspects of the mythology that land boasted, to the fun and kinetic world of Dr. Seuss, full of abstract shapes and moving parts, the rooms within the Islands of Adventure Preview Center were unique but grounded in the common themes of both the Islands themselves, and the overarching theme of literature and the adventure that these stories could take guests on.
A Glimpse of What Might Have Been
Each room also allowed guests to take their Islands of Adventure passport and get a unique stamp correlating to each room; with a total of five passport pages, guests could find the stamping stations in each room correlating to one of the themed lands. While Port of Entry did not have a stamping station (or a dedicated page within the passport), Seuss’ Landing, The Lost Continent, Toon Lagoon, Marvel Superhero Island, and Jurassic Park did.
Perhaps one of the most interesting things about this passport is how it listed the major attractions for each land. A land like The Lost Continent, for instance, checks out perfectly, listing opening day attractions like Dueling Dragons, The Eighth Voyage of Sinbad, Poseidon’s Fury, and Mythos Restaurant. Other passport listings, however, reveal fascinating glimpses of what might have been, from working titles like “Sylvester McMonkey McBean’s Very Unusual Driving Machines” to “X-Men Adventure,” an entire ride for Marvel Super Hero Island that was planned but ultimately never built.
Once guests had all five pages stamped, the final room would present them with a huge model map of the park, not unlike what guests were recently treated to within the Epic Universe Preview Center! Included in this final room would be plans for the expansion and a diorama of the finished plans for the resort property, including its relation to the existing Studios location.
This Preview Center, the predecessor to the Epic Universe Preview Center we know today, was an incredible blend of theming and interactivity that perfectly showed off the accomplishments of the Universal Creative team that had worked tirelessly on engineering a brand new, cutting-edge park from the ground up.
While it may be a while before we see any more Preview Centers at Universal Orlando Resort, it’s always fun to look back on the history of the park and see the differences and similarities between the two eras of theme parks. The more things change, the more they stay the same. While a lot certainly has changed at Islands of Adventure and Universal Orlando Resort as a whole since those simpler times in the 90s, it’s safe to say that Universal’s commitment to ingenuity and the guest experience hasn’t changed at all over the years, as they continue to astound us with immersive theming and the creative expertise that we have all come to know and love from Universal.
Explore More: Videos
Universal Orlando ISLANDS OF ADVENTURE Preview Center 1997
Explore More: Resources
- Website: Universal Islands of Adventure (official)
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Danielle’s favorite stories have always been about magic and far-off adventures, and growing up in Orlando, Florida allowed her to experience those adventures in real life. As an adult, she graduated from the University of Central Florida in 2023 with a degree in Literature. Her inner child, however, still has a deep love for fairies, dragons, magic, and adventure. When not writing her next big adventure, she enjoys drawing, puzzle platformers, theme parks, and fast roller coasters.
The Attraction Archaeology column is published every other Thursday. #ThrowbackThursday
