TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 \u201cWho stole Buzzy?\u201d<\/p>\n
The question, regarding an infamous and unresolved Disney World mystery, may be familiar to those who follow the vast world of Disney influencers, or to the type of hardcore theme park enthusiasts referred to as \u201cpixie dusters\u201d in the documentary \u201cStolen Kingdom.\u201d<\/p>\n
For others, the new film lifts the curtain on a world of mischief, danger, wonder and friendship tied to Florida\u2019s premiere tourist attraction.<\/p>\n
\u201cStolen Kingdom\u201d was a seven-year project by 31-year-old director and Tampa native Joshua Bailey, who is currently traveling on a 23-city tour of screenings and Q&As.<\/p>\n
\u201cStolen Kingdom\u201d starts with an introduction to Buzzy, an obscure animatronic character that starred in the long-defunct Cranium Command attraction at Epcot\u2019s Wonders of Life Pavilion. For years after the attraction closed, the robot, weighing hundreds of pounds, sat in limbo, suspended from the ceiling of the darkened attraction. Then someone stole it.<\/p>\n
Unspooling the shifty story of memorabilia thief Patrick Spikes, the former Disney World employee behind the \u201cBack Door Disney\u201d social account \u2014 and for a time, a prime suspect in Buzzy\u2019s disappearance \u2014 serves as the narrative hook in the movie\u2019s true crime tale.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, it\u2019s the story of youthful mischief and friendship between Disney enthusiasts Dave Ensign (aka \u201cHoot Gibson\u201d) and the late Ed Barlow Jr. (aka \u201cThunder Chief\u201d) that serves as the doc\u2019s heart.<\/p>\n
Massive fans of the Epcot ride Horizons, which carried visitors through futuristic scenes from the then yet-to-come 21st century, the friends eventually discovered they could simply pull up their lap bars, get out and explore the stages with their camcorder rolling.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s my favorite part,\u201d Bailey said. \u201cThose guys are pretty pure.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the peak blogging era arrived about a decade later, their videos, originally shot just for themselves, Bailey said, went online. They became a sensation among both Disney fans and the type of people who love an obscure peek behind the scenes.<\/p>\n
The emotional climax comes years later, as Ensign visits Disney World in an attempt to honor his best friend\u2019s last wish.<\/p>\n
The men set the stage for later YouTubers who\u2019ve since brought views of Disney\u2019s off-limits areas to millions of viewers.<\/p>\n
Bailey documents the subculture of urban explorers setting out on expeditions to dark corners of the theme park. Sometimes under cover of darkness, and sometimes while the park is open, they visit closed attractions, backstage areas and storage rooms to make content, evading cops and scaling uneasy heights.<\/p>\n
One particularly wild goal: Visiting Disney\u2019s abandoned Discovery Island, as urban explorer and YouTuber Matt Sonswa did. It\u2019s an actual island that was once one of the world\u2019s largest walkthrough aviaries, filled with wildlife.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery time I make a video, I risk my life. I risk my freedom,\u201d Sonswa says in one interview, after viewers see clips of his visit to the island that now looks like an abandoned science lab being reclaimed by a jungle.<\/p>\n
Bailey himself grew up a big Disney World fan. Having the length of Interstate 4 between him and the park, he said, kept it within reach, but not so close that he ever got tired of it.<\/p>\n
After moving to Orlando to attend film classes at Valencia College, he got a job at Disney World. He eventually started meeting people like Spikes and Sonswa.<\/p>\n
\u201cI got into urban exploring and kind of grew up in the punk and hardcore skateboarding world and that\u2019s where a lot of the people in the film kind of operated, too,\u201d he said. \u201cWe were like a crossover segment of, like, edgier, kind of tattooed, Disney fans.\u201d<\/p>\n
By the time he started interviewing many of the film\u2019s subjects, \u201cI\u2019d been watching their videos since I was a teenager.\u201d<\/p>\n
The documentary shows the abundance of theme park memorabilia that has made its way from Disney parks into collectors\u2019 hands \u2014 John Stamos, Neil Patrick Harris and multiple NBA players are among those shown in \u201cStolen Kingdom.\u201d The items range from small trinkets like plastic fish to huge vehicles from the Dumbo ride.<\/p>\n
The documentary points out both the absurdity of coveting such artifacts \u2014 a bomber jacket pulled from an obscure, defunct animatronic character, or a binder of yellowed operational manuals for the Haunted Mansion, for instance \u2014 and their very real allure. Many have made their way to auctions and sold for many thousands of dollars.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike, obviously, it\u2019s stolen,\u201d one interview subject says of the theme park items that go up for auction.<\/p>\n
Nearly all the documentary\u2019s subjects have been banned from the Disney parks for life.<\/p>\n
One thing Bailey didn\u2019t include was detailed accounts of the holes in Disney security, or how the explorers got into those off-limits areas, though he said many of them are hidden in plain sight.<\/p>\n
\u201cDisney are masters of deception when it comes to that, even down to the paint they use on some of that stuff,\u201d he said. \u201cThey have \u2018go-away\u2019 green, which makes people not look at things, and then there buildings painted a shade of blue that simply blends into the sky.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut we didn\u2019t need to give people an instruction manual on how to get to Discovery Island,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s dangerous territory.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n
\u201cStolen Kingdom\u201d is available stream now on the Letterboxd Video Store. It will be widely available for streaming rental on Aug. 1.<\/p>\n
\u2014\u2014\u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 \u201cWho stole Buzzy?\u201d The question, regarding an infamous and unresolved Disney World mystery, may be…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":315434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[121848,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-315433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-entertainment_news","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/315434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}