(7/6/09) The Orlando Sentinel has reported a few new items about the Wizarding World this week, along with a nice new aerial shot of a building under construction. The plans filed with the city do confirm that Hogwarts will be 150 feet tall. Meanwhile some new construction pictures have been posted to BrianOrndorf.com. Meanwhile an inside sources apparently decided to walk right up to the dragon’s den itself and pop off a couple of quick pictures into an open door. I adjusted them due to the darkness inside which pretty much revealed what we had heard already… that there really wasn’t much at all to see inside at this point a year out from the ride’s opening.
(7/5/09) In an interview with Emma Watson (Hermione) on the BBC Friday night she mentioned a little tid-bit about the new ride at Islands of Adventure. When asked if the film’s cast was involved with the ride or not she replied, “Actually we were, we filmed a scene for one of the rides an it’s going to be like interactive and we are going to talk to you and stuff.”
Of course this fits along with the report earlier this year that had a bunch of still photos being down of the cast riding brooms in front of a green-screen room for a camera unit that I believe was mounted to a mechanical arm so they could capture the movement information to replicate it into the ride itself. Of course all that information about the shoot was taken down lickety-split… and I even got a call from the UK company responsible for it asking me to take down my link about it at the time.
Right now I can only assume it’s a matter of time… maybe days… before Universal pops the cork and unveils the details about this hush-hush ride they’ve been working on. A perfect time would be to do it around the release date of the newest film on July 15th.
Universal has also updated the official preview site of the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, complete with a new front poster that shows Harry (wand at the ready) standing before Hogwarts castle. Click on the numbered gallery images and you’ll find that they’ve altered the artwork on number “Six” showing Hogsmeade. In the background the street now seems to turn a corner to the right while the original artwork posted before had the street continuing straight ahead down past even more buildings for another block or so, past large snowpiles on either side of the street. Oh… and the castle has been altered to include the pointy tower with the round window structure that was previously added about not too long ago to the concept artwork on number “Four” and “Five”.

http://www.screamscape.com/html/isla..._adventure.htm