Florida Film Festival: “Stolen Kingdom” Dives into the Disney World Black Market
I was an employee of Walt Disney World from 2013 to 2016. My first job was at quick-service food and beverage in Frontierland, Adventureland, and Liberty Square, then I moved to the FastPass+ team. My last job with Disney was as an usher for the Festival of the Lion King show. All this is to say that I came into director Joshua Bailey’s Stolen Kingdom documentary with a lot of prior knowledge. It makes perfect sense that Stolen Kingdom is the opening night film for the 2025 Florida Film Festival. There is perhaps no audience better prepared for true-crime theme park stories than that of this festival.
For the uninitiated, Walt Disney World is the four-park Florida theme park that’s home to Mickey Mouse and all his friends. It’s often called The Most Magical Place on Earth, but what most don’t know is that there’s a dark underbelly to these parks. A Disney Black Market, if you will, of stolen goods from the properties. Stolen Kingdom is an impressively thorough examination of the world of Disney urban explorers, thieves, and general diehard fans who want to see beyond the magical facade. Bailey structures his documentary around one question avid theme park goers have been asking since 2018: Who stole Buzzy?
Courtesy of Stolen Kingdom
From 1989 to 2007, the EPCOT theme park was home to an attraction called Cranium Command. It was a show that incorporated a large animatronic, Buzzy, who was the show’s main character. From 2007 to 2018, the show sat abandoned, a perfectly preserved shell of what it once was. Youtube urban explorer Matt Sonswa ventured into the depths of Cranium Command and filmed his exploits in 2017. The video encouraged many copycat explorers to follow in his footsteps. It showed Disney employee Patrick Spikes a few things worth stealing for his high-profile, high-paying Disney memorabilia clients. While he maintains his innocence to this day, it’s Patrick’s name that comes up time and again when Buzzy’s animatronic mysteriously disappears in 2018.
Stolen Kingdom is a slim 74 minutes, which makes the fact that it’s thorough and engaging all the more impressive. Even if the audience has no knowledge about the underworld of Disney, they’ll quickly get up to speed. The same goes for people on the other end of the spectrum, and the film’s ability to speak to both groups cannot be overstated. Most documentaries don’t know how to build a bridge between the experts and the novices, but Stolen Kingdom has managed to find that sweet spot.
Courtesy of Stolen Kingdom
In many ways, Stolen Kingdom feels like a spiritual sibling to the Netflix series American Vandal, which was made as a tongue-in-cheek critique of the true-crime genre. Stolen Kingdom is true crime, but it’s also utterly absurd in the best way. It takes itself seriously without forgetting this is Disney World they’re talking about. The interviewees are discussing massive heists worth thousands of dollars, but they’re not stealing gems or jewels. They’re stealing raggedy pieces of clothing that haven been sitting dormant on animatronics for thirty years. One of the subjects of the film calls the theft of Buzzy “the Ocean’s 11 of Disney World.” Taking clothing or pieces of Mickey Mouse’s costume is one thing, but an entire animatronic? Steven Soderbergh could have a field day with that one.
Avid true-crime watchers will remember the jaw-dropping ending of HBO’s The Jinx. Without spoiling it, it’s a moment that upends the entire miniseries in one miniscule moment. As crazy as it is to say, Stolen Kingdom has its own Jinx-like ending that provides an equally thrilling moment of clarity and shatters all the lies, deception, and side-stepping for the tiniest glimpse of truth.
Courtesy of Stolen Kingdom
“Any time you put something in a locked box, it makes someone want to know, how do I get that lock open?” says one of the interviewees in the opening montage of the film. Disney loves its secrets, and while that makes for an immersive experience for most park goers, it creates an insatiable itch for those who have grown bored of the traditional means of experiencing the theme parks. Stolen Kingdom is a madcap heist that involves an animatronic, an NBA player, and a theme park legacy that could be shattered at the drop of a Mickey Mouse hat.
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