Exploring Abandoned Rides Across Disney World

Behind me is Disney World, the most magical place on earth, or so they say. As over the years, they've had countless rides and experiences that have gone so wrong, they were either quietly shut down or abandoned entirely. So in this video, we're gonna be exploring all these old Disney attractions to see where they are today, starting with Stitch's Great Escape. Originally known as Alien Encounter, this ride was built to be a more friendly experience for families, but after countless children getting traumatized by the Stitch animatronic, the ride was forced to shut down and the show building has remained abandoned ever since. If I remember correctly, the sign of the location literally used to be right there. I'm actually surprised. I actually had no idea that they removed it. I did find it weird, however, that all the other props from the Stitch ride remained intact, so why was the entrance sign the only thing that was removed? Well, I decided to go on in and investigate for myself. We do have a little entrance right here. I do not see any cast members in sight, so. Let's go, let's go, let's go. Gotta be quick, gotta be quick. Let's see, can we still see anything? We have the spaceships right here. I do see that a lot of the stuff has still remained in place. This whole dome is gutted, though. They do gotta repair that. And here we have the fabled exit sign of the attraction. I wonder what's inside. Yeah, I'm kinda lost. I'm not supposed to be here, right? All right. Now, even if I did manage to make it inside, which I definitely had no intentions in doing, I probably wouldn't have found too much because they allegedly gutted the whole place out a couple of years back, but there's still countless videos you can find online of what this place used to look like, and some of them are pretty disturbing. However, this Stitch ride is just the tip of the iceberg because we still got a bunch of other abandoned attractions here at Disney, including an island that's been abandoned for over 30 years. I then made my way to the next abandoned ride on this list, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. This ride opened all the way back in 1971, and would take you through a deep sea expedition based on the famous novel and film. But due to high operational costs and declining popularity, the ride would close its doors in 1994, and for nearly a decade, the lagoon and its infrastructure sat abandoned. Now, this attraction was actually so big that it has now been replaced by two attractions. And if you go to the new Little Mermaid ride they opened up, you can still find a couple of remains, starting with this waterfall right here, because during the opening of the ride, they actually poured down original water from the old 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea ride into this river. I also took a little tour inside the queue and found a rock formation that nods to the old submarine. But the main reason I put this ride on this list is if you have the Disney money to spend, you can actually take one of their cruise line voyages that dock at Castaway Cay and dive down to see the last remaining submarine from the official attraction. I was gonna do it for this video, but a one-way ticket costs like $3,000. Maybe in the future, though. Now it's time we explore a ride, or whole land, actually, that's still abandoned to this day. The Wonders of Life. The Wonders of Life Pavilion was a health and wellness-themed land in Epcot, featuring attractions like Body Wars, Cranium Command, and other exhibits on nutrition and fitness. But after MetLife ended its sponsorship in 2001, the pavilion lost its funding and was left abandoned for years. And as of today, the Wonders of Life Pavilion still remains abandoned. There used to be just like construction walls, like right over here that'll block the entrance, but now it seems like they basically just covered it with trees. And I'm assuming over the years, the trees are just gonna get bigger and bigger to where it's basically gonna become impossible to see this old attraction. I managed to get an aerial view of the place as I was leaving the park, and I was able to notice that the pathway to the Wonders of Life is still there. So maybe they have plans to bring this abandoned land back to life. I then managed to stop by Disney Springs, formerly known as Pleasure Island, which is home to an abandoned attraction known as Disney Quest. This thing was a massive five-story indoor theme park packed with interactive attractions like virtual reality rides where you could build your own roller coaster. But as the tech got outdated and crowds thinned out, Disney shut it down in 2017, leaving behind what felt like a forgotten arcade of the future. I remember when I was a kid and this place still opened, my mom would never let me go in there because it was all dirty and I had to be a little bit older. But look at me now, Mom. Yeah, I still can't go into this place. It's now abandoned. Also, if you're wondering why the building looks a little weird, it's because a couple of years after its closure, Disney tried repurposing this place into an NBA experience, but that unfortunately ended up failing too, and now this place remains abandoned once again. The NBA bar has still remained open though, which is weird. You would think since they closed the NBA experience, they would close the bar also. Not gonna lie, I don't think I can see anything in there. It seems like they basically boarded all the windows up with like a black curtain of some sort. So it was unfortunately impossible for me to see anything that was inside. I did just find out though that this place is gonna be getting a remodel pretty soon, and it won't remain abandoned for any longer. But a place that'll probably remain abandoned forever is Disney's Discovery Island. This was a mini Disneyland home to exotic birds and other kinds of wildlife. But after fierce competition with Animal Kingdom and many controversies surrounding Disney mistreating its animals, the island shut its doors in 1999 and has been abandoned ever since. But for some odd reason, the island is still swarmed with security to this day. And if you try to get any close, the Disney police will catch you and ban you for life. So our goal by the end of this video is to get as close to the island as possible and find out what Disney is really hiding. And we're gonna be starting with the Magic Kingdom monorail, which takes you right over Bay Lake, where you can actually rediscover the island for a split second. But when I hopped on the train, all I could really see were just a bunch of trees and crying little kids. So I moved on to my second plan and snuck into the Contemporary Resort. This is one of Disney World's most iconic hotels. And the main reason we're here is because it is the closest place that's located right next to the abandoned island. So if there's any place that can help us see what's on the island, it's this hotel right here. I think I see it already, oh my gosh, look at this. Right over there, if you can see it, that's the island. And I believe that's Disney security over there, guarding the island, making sure no one gets onto it. I tried to go to one of the upper levels so I could get a better view of the island, but it turns out that you actually need a room key, which I obviously don't have. So I ended up just going back outside to re-strategize. Almost ended up scrapping this video, not gonna lie, until I went closer to the back of the resort and saw an ominous boat pulling into the pier. So it turns out those boats aren't actually for security. I'm pretty sure they actually take you around Discovery Island. I actually didn't know that. Keep it pushing, baby, keep it pushing. How you doing? Doing good. What the heck's going on, guys? Let's just say my stress levels were at an all-time high. Now I'm an annual pass holder at Disney, so I can get into the parks just fine, but I'm not a guest at this resort. And if the driver starts checking for room keys, I'm low-key screwed. I do notice that it's been like a couple of minutes and we haven't moved yet. The driver's still like looking around ominously. I'm praying he's not checking to see if I'm an actual guest here, but we'll see what happens. So my plan was to just remain calm, you know, act like I'm a normal guest here at this resort, and it somehow worked. We're moving, we're moving, baby. We're gonna actually be able to get up close to this island. This is literally insane. But before we get up close to the island and interview an actual Disney employee, I do want to remind you guys to hit that subscribe button down below. We're trying to get 100,000 subs by the end of the year, so let's make it happen. As we were arriving a little bit closer to the island, I started noticing some peculiar things. What is that? And when we got to the other side of the island, things only got more strange. Bro, this is insane. What the actual heck? I managed to spot some other stuff, like an abandoned boat wreck and a potential pathway. But unfortunately, the trees were too big for me to see anything on the actual inside of the abandoned island. So I hopped off the boat and asked a Disney employee, what secrets lie on this island? Do you know what that island is over there? Yeah, that's Discovery Island, it's called. Used to be years ago, it had a lot of discovery things. It was all kinds of nature, trails, and stuff like that. Were you here when it was still alive or not? I was, I never went there, but I've been back coming here since the late 70s. Oh, nice. Sucks that it's shut down. Yeah. He also told me about an abandoned water park that used to be here called Disney's River Country. River Country used to be there. You used to be able to go from River Country to Discovery Island. And River Country actually dumped you right into the lake. Oh, really? Yeah, there were water slides that you could get out. That's awesome. Dumped you right into the lake it was. He actually took me to where this abandoned water park was, and it is now being turned into an all new hotel. Yeah, they literally, they got full steam ahead. Look at that crane, bro, that crane is massive. I was still curious about Discovery Island, however, so I ended up going back to the mainland and asking the Disney employee a couple of more questions. Do you know if there's like anything still on there or no? No, not really. Old abandoned building, old shack where they used to dock and drop people off. Has anyone like tried to like get to the island or no? You will probably find out more than I know about this place. So I did some research online, and there actually was one man who managed to sneak onto the island. But that was a really long time ago, and the island has changed drastically since then. So if this video gets 50,000 likes, I'll attempt to sneak onto this island myself and get crisp 4K footage of what this place looks like today. Also, Disney, if you're watching this, I'm obviously joking, and please don't sue me.