Depending on who you ask, the cultural domination of the Walt Disney Company can be a wonderful thing or an inescapable nightmare. From Marvel to Pixar, 20th Century Studios to Lucasfilm, and theme parks from Orlando to Tokyo with cruise ships in the waters between them, Disney is everywhere. With that much presence and power in people’s lives, it comes as no surprise to see strange pockets of fans pop up––such as Disney Adults clinging on to childlike wonder long after their childhood years. Joshua Bailey’s Stolen Kingdom takes a look at one of the more extreme offshoots of Disney fandom through urban explorers, whose interest in Walt Disney World extends well beyond the theme park’s defined borders. It’s an entertaining, surface-level look at a bizarre subculture that, while sometimes hilarious, leaves a lot on the table.
Bailey’s hopscotch structure establishes the mystery of a missing animatronic in a defunct attraction before stepping back in time, first to establish the concept of urban exploration. Interviews with several YouTubers explain the appeal of recording themselves wandering through closed-down and forgotten locations, with Disney World’s popularity and tight security making it an attractive place to film and gain notoriety. The vast size of the park and high cost of demolishing closed-down rides means they’re usually abandoned, and for Disney these parts of their past aren’t worth a spot in their vault. Some fans disagree: one subject says he looks at theme park attractions as artworks, and thus Disney must deal with the die-hards willing to create liabilities by poking around where they shouldn’t. There’s an obvious connection to be made between Disney mining nostalgia while retaliating against its fans for doing the same thing; Bailey doesn’t bother making the link.
Instead the film goes back to the ’80s and ’90s, where former Walt Disney World employee Dave Ensign filmed his friends getting up to various forms of mischief in the park. Much of the footage is fun to watch, like when someone sneaks Playboy magazines onto the set of a dark ride at Epcot, but it isn’t exactly revelatory for anyone who ever worked summer jobs as a teen. Bailey takes us through this light history lesson to draw a line between generations––Ensign uploaded the footage in the late 2000s to YouTube and inspired others to show off backstage goings-on.
It’s a lot of table-setting to get to the more absurd and entertaining developments with Disney fandom in recent years. Ensign, now older and mellower, looks back fondly on his younger days while understanding and respecting others who have an obsession with Disney. When one of Ensign’s closest friends (and partners in crime when they worked at the park) passes away, he films himself fulfilling the friend’s dying wish: to have their ashes spread at Magic Kingdom, which Ensign does after sneaking them in through park security. Bailey’s direction takes on a similar perspective as Ensign’s, respecting his subjects and their interests without mocking them while not shying from how extreme they can get.
The film shifts gears in its final act to former Disney World employee Patrick Spikes, who used to run an account called Back Door Disney. Like Ensign and the urban explorers, Spikes enjoyed sharing the inner workings of the park with others. Once he discovers a market of buyers interested in purchasing old parts of rides, things turn criminal, culminating in the stealing of a large animatronic. Spikes maintains his innocence, but once police begin to investigate the theft he becomes their prime suspect, and over the course of one day Spikes’ operation comes crashing down.
Bailey hits the jackpot with Spikes as a subject––his patheticness and lack of shame suggests a real-life character from a Coen brothers comedy. He’s brash and unapologetic while lacking any self-awareness, like when he says he doesn’t care about being banned by Disney while he sits in his bedroom surrounded by park souvenirs. The film’s high point comes when Spikes details the day the cops arrested him, which he recounts as if he was a mastermind several steps ahead of the authorities. Bailey juxtaposes the interview with footage from the police interrogation that show a funnier, more desperate version of events.
Stolen Kingdom extracts plenty from the moments where people’s love of Disney crosses into something more disturbing and with real, legal consequences. And while the film is a fun, short watch, Bailey can’t tie various threads in a way that’s as satisfying as its best moments. Given the decades of history and various ways people obsess over just one facet of the Disney corporation, there’s a sense that Bailey has only scratched the surface of a much deeper subject. But what he does capture is enjoyable enough––glimpsing a subject that’s full of potential.
Stolen Kingdom screened at the 2025 Slamdance Film Festival.