‘Stolen Kingdom’ director relishes deep dive into Disney underworld

[Disney4me]

As a child growing up in Tampa, Joshua Bailey was just outside the shadow of Walt Disney World. But that didn’t stop him from falling for the magic.

“It was very enticing from a young age,” he says. “I’ve always been a theme park aficionado.”

But as an adult, he learned that even pixie dust can have a dark side. The result is his documentary “Stolen Kingdom,” which will open the annual Florida Film Festival on Friday night. Bailey will attend and talk about his film.

It’s the logical, perhaps inevitable, convergence of Bailey’s interests: Theme parks, movie-making and urban exploring — the practice of roaming around buildings and other areas not usually accessible to the public.

“Stolen Kingdom” looks at the urban explorers of Disney parks — those who sneak into backstage areas and shuttered attractions — and then dives even deeper into those who parlay the practice into financial gain by selling Disney “artifacts” — stolen props, costumes, manuals and other paraphernalia — on the theme-park black market.

“I don’t think there was anyone more suited to make this film than my team and me,” he says.

Disneyana collector Joel Magee shows off his treasures in a scene from “Stolen Kingdom.” (Courtesy White Lake Productions via Enzian Theater)

So far, “Stolen Kingdom” has been screened at the Big Sky Documentary Film Festival in Montana and the Slamdance Film Festival in Los Angeles. It also has been selected for the Independent Film Festival Boston later this month.

For Bailey, who now lives in Winter Park and has a full-time gig as a graphic designer, the film is a culmination of a journey that began in childhood.

“All kids are imaginative, but I was really trying to run around and make movies in my head,” Bailey says. “I was into film even before the parks.”

As soon as he graduated from high school, Bailey headed to Orlando to combine his passions: He would study film at Valencia College and work at Disney World.

Florida Film Festival celebrities: Mia Farrow, Christina Ricci

The reality was a lot different than the movie in his mind.

“I’d had this dream for years, all through high school … and then I hated it,” says Bailey, who turns 30 this year.

After working four months as an attractions attendant at Epcot’s now-demolished Innoventions, he left Disney. (He did spend two years working for Universal Orlando, though, with much more enjoyment.)

And he left Valencia, too.

“I had all these ideas for films, and I wanted to make them instead of working on someone else’s set,” he says.

“Stolen Kingdom” was nudged into production after the infamous “Buzzy” scandal. An animatronic figure in the long-closed Cranium Command attraction at Epcot, Buzzy was reported stolen in 2018. The figure — life-size and weighing several hundred pounds — has never been found.

The saga of the theft of Walt Disney World’s “Buzzy” animatronic, seen in an image from the “Stolen Kingdom,” is at the center of the documentary. It’s the opening-night film for this year’s Florida Film Festival. (Courtesy White Lake Productions via Enzian Theater)

Through social media, Bailey already had gotten to know multiple theme-park “urban explorers” and had dabbled in urban exploring himself, though “not at Disney,” he says.

He also had met Patrick Spikes, a one-time Disney employee who would later plead no contest to charges of stealing a wide array of items from Walt Disney World, although he has never admitted to taking Buzzy. It was Spikes who opened Bailey’s eyes to the market for illegally obtained Disney curiosities.

When news of Buzzy’s disappearance broke, Bailey rounded up his filmmaker friends with an urgent message: “Remember that idea we had for a Disney black-market movie? We should probably really get on this!”

“Stolen Kingdom” documents how this specialized form of urban exploring — some would call it breaking and entering — developed and how a small community formed through blogs, YouTube videos and other social media. Some of the happenings referenced in the film received widespread media attention: People trespassing on Disney’s Discovery Island, infiltrating the Seven Seas Lagoon outside Magic Kingdom, or sneaking into River Country, a closed water park.

At Orlando festival, artificial intelligence takes the stage. Can it entertain you?

Other anecdotes — a near-death experience in an off-limits area of the old Horizons ride at Epcot, for example — are shocking to those of us not familiar with this world.

“I think everyone interviewed, with the exception of the journalists, is on some level a criminal,” Bailey says. Contributing Central Florida journalists include my former Orlando Sentinel colleague Gabrielle Russon, who covered theme parks for the newspaper, and Seth Kubersky, who writes park guidebooks and contributes to the Orlando Weekly.

Bailey says “Stolen Kingdom” is not meant to encourage bad behavior.

“I don’t think you should go stomping around Big Thunder Mountain,” Bailey says. “I didn’t want to glorify anything, but it still is very fascinating.”

Patrick Spikes, pictured in a scene from “Stolen Kingdom,” pleaded no contest to dealing in stolen property and avoided jail time after being arrested in connection with missing Walt Disney World property. (Courtesy White Lake Productions via Enzian Theater)

Perhaps the engrossing and entertaining film can be seen as a cautionary tale: Most of the explorers interviewed have been banned from Disney World for life. And although he avoided jail time, Spikes was ordered to pay restitution as part of his no-contest plea.

In “Stolen Kingdom,” Spikes talks about making $25,000 in one transaction involving stolen goods. And he says he was offered tens of thousands if he could procure the famous Redhead female animatronic from Pirates of the Caribbean. (He declined the offer.)

Bailey says he was intrigued by these shadowy collectors who obviously don’t let morality stand in the way of adding to their spoils.

“They know these things aren’t for sale,” he says. “It’s just confirming that these people don’t care if an item was stolen or not.”

He observes that Disney has woven itself so well into the fabric of society that perhaps Americans today feel a proprietary right to the theme parks. That notion is another layer to the title “Stolen Kingdom.”

“Disney is being stolen by the culture of America,” Bailey says. “It doesn’t feel like Disney owns it all, it’s part of the people now.”

As for himself, Bailey did return to Disney employment for a spell after that first, ill-fated, four-month stint. But today he says he’s “Disney’d out.”

In this image from the documentary “Stolen Kingdom,” Patrick Spikes examines what appears to be a figure from the Disney attraction “it’s a small world.” (Courtesy White Lake Productions via Enzian Theater)

“I will always love Disney,” he says, “but I think I love it more on a historical level. The corporate entertainment world these days is so creatively bankrupt and exhausting — I just can’t care about IP [intellectual property] and franchises.”

There is one thing that could lure him back into the fold, though: The mystery of what happened to Buzzy.

“I wanted to solve it, and thought we could,” Bailey says. “I went a little crazy digging through everything, there were a lot of sleepless nights where I was chasing leads but they all led to dead ends. I have to consciously tell myself to let it go.”

But what if someone confesses, or Buzzy miraculously turns up all these years later?

“If I’m really being honest, I would love that,” he says. “I’d be turning the camera on immediately. If someone finds it in a crate somewhere, I hope we’re there.”

Follow me at facebook.com/matthew.j.palm or email me at mpalm@orlandosentinel.com. Find more entertainment news and reviews at orlandosentinel.com/entertainment or sign up to receive our emailed weekly Entertainment newsletter. 

‘Stolen Kingdom’

• When: 6 p.m. April 11, with a 5:15 p.m. preshow reception (Note other festival screenings of the film are sold out)
• Where: Enzian Theater, 1300 S. Orlando Ave. in Maitland
• Cost: $125, includes the festival’s opening-night party after the screening
• Info: floridafilmfestival.com

View the full article