SCREEN | Trespassing A Magical Heist – 'Stolen Kingdom'

"Being a kid in the '80s, the future was not optimistic."

White Lake Productions / Bright Sun Films

Native Floridan director Joshua Bailey uncovers the sordid underground black market economy and hidden trespassing subculture of theft behind Walt Disney World in his pop documentary with true-crime undertones, Stolen Kingdom. Delving into the niche topic of "theme park urban exploration," Bailey employs backstage footage of mischief that eventually culminates in the stealing of a valued animatronic, "Buzzy," supposedly worth half a million dollars despite being left abandoned in disrepair.

After the unpopular healthcare-themed Epcot pavilion attraction, the "Wonders of Life," was closed to the public in 2007 but left effectively retired in stasis and forgotten, breaking into the defunct attraction and other nearby areas by these so-called "urban explorers" became popular and trendy on social media beyond its initial popularity between Disney cast members decades prior.

Bailey painstakingly lays out the thirty-year history and personalities behind the 1980-2000s rise and fall of these Disney park adventurers and later thieves. When the whole Buzzy mystery from the "Cranium Command" section eventually comes about, the documentary culminates into a further entertaining endeavour around the history of mischief by former employees.

There's a particularly seedy quality to the family-oriented magic of Stolen Kingdom's illicit subject matter as it contrasts the wholesomeness of a Disney theme park with the illegal act of trespassing. If nothing else, it's an amusing historical documentation of bored young adult Disney workers fooling around after hours and the exploratory theft culture it later led to. Wrapped around Buzzy's disappearance, who remains missing, it strikes the right tone and energy.

Stolen Kingdom screened as part of the 2025 Slamdance Film Festival in Los Angeles.


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