At this year’s Florida Film Festival, the Sunshine State will be well-represented thanks to an expanded Florida Showcase block (four features) and many local-focused shorts. But it’s the Opening night film, documentary Stolen Kingdom, that will likely turn the most heads.
“We pillage, we plunder, we rifle and loot,” sing the animatronics in Disney World’s Pirates of the Caribbean ride. But, being robots, they can’t really commit those crimes. Instead, it’s some human park visitors, even some Disney cast members, who are the true criminals.
“Urban exploration” — often-illegal expeditions undertaken by trespassers who sneak into abandoned properties and retired attractions, sometimes stealing souvenirs — is the subject of the debut film by director Joshua Bailey.
“This film feels like a culmination of my entire life up until this point,” Bailey says. “I grew up in Tampa with a deep fascination in theme parks. While being interested in Disney, I was also a skateboarder and went to hardcore shows, so I came across a few of the subjects in the film that felt like an intersection of those interests, and that led me to the world of underground Disney fans.”
Stolen Kingdom is an entertaining, comical, disturbing and downright tragic look at what was once supposed to be a cultural utopia. But because of neglect and disinterest from Disney itself, plus felonious behavior by the very people who should respect the Mouse, that dream world in many instances has turned post-apocalyptic.
“A few years after I moved to Orlando at 18 for college and to work at the parks, there was an uptick in Disney urban exploring, so I started to entrench myself in that world,” Bailey says. “I decided to make a film on the subject, and then two months later the Buzzy animatronic went missing.”
The doc is bookended by the story of Buzzy, the animatronic star of Cranium Command, an extinct show at EPCOT’s old Wonders of Life pavilion. First someone stole Buzzy’s clothes. Then someone stole Buzzy himself.
But that’s just one part of the movie, which, in a manner reminiscent of revered documentarian Errol Morris’ work, spends most of its time addressing the odd psychology of theme-park explorers. The movie lacks some of Morris’ finesse and can be a tough watch for those who love, or used to love, Disney. But with its local lean, it’s a good fit for the Florida Film Festival.
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Bailey scores remarkably candid interviews with both savory and unsavory characters. Some love Disney and view their gonzo adventures (and their video documentation) as an important part of preserving Disney World’s heritage, while others see just cheap thrills or dollar signs.
“I kind of realized very quickly that there was a whole community of people that went and explored abandoned places,” says one explorer. “So I figured, well, you know, if other people can make a living out of this, then maybe I can make a living out of it too.”
The worst of the bunch is Patrick Spikes, who was convicted of stealing and selling Buzzy’s clothes. Spikes is unrepentant, going so far as to brand himself a Disney legend. Hey, even the aforementioned pirates were “loved by their mommies and dads” — Spikes is seemingly loved only by himself.
Among all Stolen Kingdom‘s interviewees, Orlando Weekly‘s own Seth Kubersky is most profound: “Disney is very fond of saying theme parks are not a museum. If you say a theme park is not a museum, you’re also implying that themed attractions are not art. And for me and a lot of other people who are theme-park fans, we feel like it is an art form, and these are things that should be preserved.”
This lack of artistic respect has led not just to the crimes Bailey documents in his film but offenses perpetuated by Disney itself, such as the demolition of cherished attractions and, in perhaps the company’s greatest “Penn Station” moment, the destruction of Tom Sawyer Island, the park within a park that was the Magic Kingdom’s aesthetic heart.
“You can design and create and build the most wonderful place in the world, but it takes people to make the dream a reality,” Walt Disney said.
The world has let Walt down.
Bailey says, “I hope people that have no exposure to this world watch this film and see a different side of the Disney parks. I think a lot of people will and already have viewed it as a partly comedic documentary, but I genuinely hope they take away something more profound. … Disney has become something that’s ingrained in American pop culture, and whether it’s paying $20,000 for a piece of Disney World or jumping out of a dying attraction to desperately preserve it, these people feel like they have ownership over this thing.
“And that’s the ‘stolen kingdom’ for me. Things were quite literally stolen in the film, but this figurative ‘kingdom’ of Disney culture has been stolen away from them and is a part of us all at this point.”
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This article appears in The 420 Issue 2025.