It takes a lot of strict rules, tight security and unrelenting cheeriness to craft the fantasy of Walt Disney World. But as Stolen Kingdom makes immediately clear, the most magical place on Earth is “not immune to crime.” In fact, there’s a whole online community of people who trespass into the abandoned and off-limits areas of the theme parks, wandering away from the watchful eye of the Mouse.
The documentary, which screened on Saturday at Milwaukee Film’s Dialogues Documentary Festival, introduces us to a colorful cast of self-described urban explorers, accompanied by eerie footage of their (illegal) exploits hopping around closed rides or inside Walt Disney’s private jet, for example. “It’s like opening a casket,” Dead Mall filmmaker Dan Bell says about the allure. “It’s something that once served a purpose and doesn’t anymore.”
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Some are motivated by a fascination and appreciation for the parks (like pre-internet explorer Dave “Hoot Gibson” Ensign), and others chase that passion with a bit of viral notoriety (like content creator Matt Sonswa, who says he wants to “show people what they can’t normally see.”) One former employee, Patrick Spikes, uploads behind-the-scenes photos on an account called BackDoorDisney. All of them find a thrill lurking in the shadows.
And then there are those who steal. The film’s story centers on an animatronic named Buzzy, part of an abandoned ride at Epcot. First his jacket, cap and rubber hands go missing, then the entire animatronic itself. Was he stolen? Why, and how on Earth?
Much of Stolen Kingdom goes down a rabbit hole of the oddball subculture that lives on the edges of Disney fandom. The film itself is a fun theme park ride, mostly in a good way. It’s riddled with ridiculous quotes, humorous edits and at least two actually dumbfounding moments (one of which induced lots of laughs from a Milwaukee audience). A surprisingly touching scene underscores how much of our passions are wrapped up in the people we share them with.
The Buzzy mystery gets a bit lost in the diversions, and it reappears later than you expect in the 73-minute documentary. But Stolen Kingdom is too much of a delight to get caught in a single narrative, and it’s a curious exploration into the tug and pull between one certain media conglomerate and its fans.
