Joshua Bailey’s subtitle, “Bad Things Happen at the Happiest Place on Earth,” for his documentary, “Stolen Kingdom,” gives us a hint at the film’s subject. The film, playing at the M.V. Film Center starting Friday, May 29, takes us on a deep dive into the odd world of underground urban explorers at Walt Disney World and its Epcot theme park.
“Stolen Kingdom” premiered to rave reviews and sold-out crowds at the Slamdance and Big Sky film festivals. In it, we meet several urban explorers, individuals who trespass into restricted, backstage, or abandoned areas of the parks to document them. Throughout, they recount what turn out to be their old exploits, since most of them have been caught over time and banned from the parks. Bailey mixes contemporary interviews with old footage explorers took while clambering deep behind the scenes of the exhibitions and rides.
The explorers are particularly drawn to going backstage at old, abandoned Disney sites. One explorer says, “It’s basically opening a casket and seeing a place that hasn’t been used, is falling apart, and at one time served a purpose … but doesn’t anymore. People love that kind of stuff.” He’s referring to the thousands of followers these explorers had when they posted their videos online. For instance, the late Adam the Woo, identified as the titan of theme park exploration, had half a million subscribers on YouTube.
While the explorers get a kick out of their fan base’s adoration and the risk of getting hurt in these dilapidated locations, part of the pull seems to be the excitement of whether they will get caught. Matt Sonswa, for instance, shares, “It’s terrifying, but I want to show people things they normally can’t see. That feeling of not knowing what’s going to happen next is unreplaceable [sic].”
As the narrative unfolds, early pranks and antics are shown to have inspired more recent crimes. Toward the end, we learn about a black market in stolen goods from these abandoned exhibitions. Not all explorers necessarily did so, but it seems there are those willing to pay exorbitant amounts for their loot. Joel Magee speaks about having the world’s largest privately owned collection of memorabilia, which he estimates is now worth $7 million to $10 million.
Bailey opens the film with news of the Buzzy audio-animatronics figure’s disappearance in 2018 from the Cranium Command attraction at the Wonders of Life Pavilion at Epcot. Buzzy was a 300-pound animatronic emcee for a show exploring the human mind that ran from 1989 to 2007. Bailey revisits the mystery of its theft, valued at nearly half a million dollars, at the end. None of the interviewees admits to taking it. But Patrick Spikes, one of the explorers, says in an interview, “To be honest, I stole a lot cooler things [that] nobody knows about, because I don’t talk about them and never will.” Thus, after meeting this community of explorers and hearing their tales of friendship and shared passion, we are left with the lingering question, Who stole Buzzy?
“Stolen Kingdom” begins Friday, May 29, at the M.V. Film Center. For more information, visit mvfilmsociety.com.
