Excerpt: Abandoned by Disney is a scary creepypasta story written by SlimeBeast. It’s based on a real island at Walt Disney World in Bay Lake, Florida. It opened in 1974 under the name “Treasure Island” and was open to guests. It was later renamed “Discovery island” and in 1999, the attraction was closed down and effectively abandoned. However, Disney still owns the island, and it is illegal to trespass on the property.
Some of you may have heard that the Disney corporation is responsible for at least one real, “live” Ghost Town. Disney built the “Treasure Island” resort in Baker’s Bay in the Bahamas. It didn’t start out as a ghost town! Disney’s cruise ships would actually stop at the resort and leave tourists there to relax in luxury.
This is a fact. Look it up.
Disney blew $30,000,000 on the place… Yes, Thirty Million Dollars.
Then they abandoned it.
Disney blamed the shallow waters (too shallow for their ships to safely operate) and there was even blame cast on the workers, saying that since they were from the Bahamas, they were too lazy to work a regular schedule.
That’s where the factual nature of their story ends. It wasn’t because of sand, and it obviously wasn’t because “foreigners are lazy”. Both are convenient excuses. I sincerely doubt those reasons were legitimate. Why don’t I buy the official story?
Because of Mowgli’s Palace.
Near the beachside city of Emerald Isle in North Carolina, Disney began construction of “Mowgli’s Palace” in the late 1990s. The concept was a Jungle-themed resort with a large palace in the centre of the whole thing. If you’re unfamiliar with the character of Mowgli, then you might better remember the story “The Jungle Book”. If you haven’t seen it anywhere else, you’d know it as the Disney cartoon from decades past. Mowgli is an abandoned child in the jungle, essentially raised by animals and simultaneously threatened and pursued by other animals.
Mowgli’s Palace was a controversial undertaking from the start. Disney bought up a ton of high-priced land for the project, and there was actually a scandal surrounding some of the purchases. The local government claimed “eminent domain” on people’s homes, then turned around and sold the properties to Disney. At one point, a home that had just been constructed was immediately condemned with little to no explanation.
The land grabbed by the government was supposedly for some fictional highway project. Knowing full well what was going on, people started calling it “Mickey Mouse Highway”.
Then, there was the concept art. A group of stuffed shirts from the Disney Company actually held a city meeting. They intended to sell everyone on how lucrative this project was going to be. When they showed the concept art, a gigantic Indian Palace… surrounded by jungle… staffed with men and women in loincloths and tribal gear… "well, suffice it to say, everyone flipped out. One member of the crowd tried to storm the stage, but he was quickly subdued by security after he managed to break one of the presentation boards over his knee.
Disney took that community and essentially broke it over its knee, as well. The houses were razed, the land was cleared, and there wasn’t a damned thing anyone could do or say about it. Local TV and Newspapers were against the resort at the beginning, but some insane connection between Disney’s media holdings and the local venues came into play, and their opinions turned on a dime.
So anyway, Treasure Island, the Bahamas. Disney sunk those millions in, and then they split. The same thing happened with Mowgli’s Palace. Construction was complete. Visitors actually stayed at the resort. The surrounding communities were flooded with traffic and the usual annoyances associated with an influx of lost and irate tourists.
