Trivia / Skull Island: Reign of Kong

• Development Hell: The idea for the attraction had been floating around ever since the 2005 film had come out. It went through many different proposals (see below) before finally getting approved.
• Distanced from Current Events: The ride was originally intended to open on June 23rd, but was pushed back to July 13th in the aftermath of the Pulse nightclub shooting.
• #EngineeredHashtag: #ChanceOfReign was a fan-created hashtag used for speculating when the ride would begin soft openings. Universal themselves took notice of the hashtag and poked fun at it.
• Officially Shortened Title: The attraction is occasionally referred to as just "Reign of Kong" in some marketing.
• Sequel Gap: The ride opened nearly 14 years after Kongfrontation closed.
• Troubled Production: Universal reportedly had a lot of technical issues with getting the attraction's trackless dark ride system to work reliably. Their experience making this ride is believed to be a factor in their reluctance to make future trackless rides: Both the Illumination’s Villain-Con Minion Blast and The Secret Life of Pets: Off the Leash were first planned as trackless rides, and the Wizarding World attraction currently planned for Epic Universe had a trackless iteration of it cancelled at one point.
• What Could Have Been:
  • The earliest proposal was to have the ride be located in the area that Harry Potter and the Forbidden Journey now occupies.
  • Another proposal that actually came very close to fruition was having the ride be a replacement for Disaster!, but was dropped as Universal Creative wanted the ride to be more ambitious. Ironically, Disaster's replacement turned out to be extremely similar to Reign of Kong, using almost identical ride vehicles and motion simulator effects.
  • The ride was meant to have live actors driving the vehicles, and at one point an animatronic Spider-Claw would grab them and pull them out of the vehicle. This was abandoned due to a mixture of safety issues and budget.