Credit: DisneyWho wouldn’t want to explore the behind-the-scenes area at Disney World? It seems like a dream for many Disney fans.
But Disney has kept the public out of these areas to ensure the illusion of Disney World remains in tact. However, despite Disney World’s best efforts, there are still those who break the law to find out what’s happening in Disney World’s inner workings, but their motives aren’t always pure.
The documentary Stolen Kingdom (2025) will debut at the Florida Film Festival this week. It tackles the world of urban explorers and the greatest unsolved theft in Walt Disney World Resort history.
The film’s director, Joshua Bailey, once worked as a Disney World cast member but also found himself drawn into urban exploring at parks.
Urban exploring occurs when people or groups of people sneak into abandoned properties and attractions. Sometimes, they just look around; other times, they pillage those attractions, taking any souvenirs they find to resell on the black market.
Bailey told Orlando Weekly:
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. I decided to make a film on the subject, and then two months later the Buzzy animatronic went missing.
Disney World has the Holy Grail for urban explorers: the Wonders of Life Pavilion story centers around one of the greatest heists in Disney history. The story centers around one of the greatest heists in Disney history, as urban explorers stole the Buzzy animatronic from the Cranium Command rides inside the Wonders of Life Pavilion. It is perhaps one of the greatest mysteries in Disney history, as Buzy is still missing.
But beyond the stolen animatronic, Stolen Kingdom is about the importance of Disney to all of us and how pieces of that Kingdom are also slowly disappearing.
Baily digs into what he calls Disney World’s “Penn Station” moment with the destruction of Tom Sawyer Island and Rivers of America. Bailey said:
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.
Stolen Kingdom will make its debut at the opening night of the Florida Film Festival on April 11.