So, I don't think it's a secret that I love theme parks... and animatronics. And I talk about them here as often as I think people will tolerate. And, I kind of recently made an extremely long theme-park-based video, so I thought I was done for the time being. But I was wrong! Over the past couple of months a story has dropped that is quite possibly the most exciting thing ever to happen in theme park history. That's my opinion, but I think I'm right. One of Disney World's iconic animatronics has gone missing from inside the park. Somebody took their boy! We are going to get the bottom of this, it's such a good story. First some extensive backstory for you guys. Who is Buzzy? Strap in. When Disney World's EPCOT Park opened, the emphasis was on science and educational exhibits. It was kind of envisioned as like the ultimate field trip experience Half of EPCOT was World Showcase, highlighting various countries and their cultures. The other half was Future World, which was dedicated to science, technology, and visions of the future. The best way to explain is it was intended as kind of a permanent Worlds Fair, right down to the idea of having differently-themed pavilions showcasing different aspects of advancement. EPCOT's Future World was divided into massive pavilions focused on different areas of study, and the intent was for each of these pavilions to be sponsored by a company, so Disney didn't have to cover 100% of the costs. The Energy pavilion was sponsored by Exxon Mobile. The Future Technology pavilion was sponsored by General Electric. The Transportation pavilion was sponsored by General Motors, et cetera. The sponsors would have their product advertised throughout the pavilion, and they'd also have the benefit of some extremely cool private corporate lounge hidden somewhere in the building usually with windows overlooking the ride or something awesome like that. And in exchange for those perks, the company would pledge money for the construction and upkeep of the pavilion for a certain number of years. Unfortunately, this model led to EPCOT quickly becoming the abandonedest park in Disney World. [commercial audio] "This is EPCOT Center." ♪ funky music ♪ "EPCOT Center." If a pavilion lost its sponsor, that's funding that Disney was not used to allocating for that pavilion. So, small costly routine maintenance would be delayed and the pavilion would start to break down. And they certainly wouldn't allocate the funds to add new things to the pavilions, so you quickly got into this vicious cycle where the pavilion would deteriorate and the public would become bored of it and not like it because it seemed kind of grubby and ill-maintained. And then that would just reaffirm why management didn't want to spend money on the pavilion because no one's going there anyway. EPCOT's Future World opened with nine original pavilions and of those original nine, four still exist in some capacity. Some were demolished and replaced, others were demolished and not replaced, some received overlays or had temporary exhibits moved into the space, and one ceased operation but was not demolished or replaced and simply sat there, intact, abandoned for years. This is our Wonders of Life pavilion. It was dedicated to health, biology, and fitness. So it was a large building with a lobby full of interactive exhibits, one ride, and one animatronic show. The ride was Body Wars which was basically a Star Tours clone – it was the exact same ride vehicles, the same programming system – but it featured an original story line about being shrunken down and going through a human body to help remove a splinter. This ride is really funny to me. So, here's the deal: motion simulators are already very likely to give some people motion sickness, and a story line about being in a vehicle that's floating through a vast quantity of blood is going to add a squeamishness element to it as well. Add to that that the ride film is animated in this prehistoric looking CGI which was very impressive at the time, but doesn't hold up well. It's that era of CGI where everything is unnervingly smooth so you have all these smooth featureless squishy cell bodies floating and bobbing around you in this river of blood. Meanwhile, the ride vehicle is throbbing in time to the heartbeat and every time the person inhales, you woosh from side to side with the motion of the lungs. What I'm trying to say is this ride made people very sick. I'm pretty sure if you took a team of scientists and locked them in a room and tasked them with creating some kind of sadistic "make humans sick" device, they would just be like we did it, it's called Body Wars. The only other attraction in the pavilion was Cranium Command. Home of Buzzy! Cranium Command was a show that utilized both screens and animatronic characters. And it was set in a large theater that was built to look like the inside of a human head. the inside of the head is characterized as a sort of military control tower, hence the name Cranium Command and you have different little army characters and other comic relief characters popping up representing different parts of biological processes. I mean, best way to explain it is, it's just Inside Out. And no, I'm not like throwing shade at this or Inside Out. I'm saying that the man who directed Inside Out literally worked as an animator on the Cranium Command project and actively said that it inspired Inside Out, so this show is Inside Out. And instead of Joy, Sadness, and co., you have Left Brain, Right Brain, Adrenal Gland, Hypothalamus. They're constantly popping up on screens as either animated segments or celebrity cameos. And to supplement the screens, the theater was also populated by a couple of animatronic characters. Hypothalamus, who was a very basic, like, pair-of-goggles-on-a-hydraulic-arm kind of robot. And Buzzy! Buzzy was the most complex, he was also the host. Buzzy is an animatronic that looks like a little human child, but wearing an army cadet uniform. Within the story, he is a new recruit and it's his job to make everything go smoothly in this day in the life of an adolescent boy and you are basically just watching him succeed. And rooting for him, because you love Buzzy. I'm not going to pretend shows in theme parks bring in huge crowds. For someone with limited time, they're less thrilling and a lower priority than, say, a roller coaster or an actual ride. They're time consuming and unlike a roller coaster someone is not likely to visit them more than once in a single trip, so you're not getting a lot of repeat customers. However, I want to make it clear that Cranium Command did not close because it was bad or unpopular. People liked Cranium Command, it was charming. And if they had built Cranium Command just, like, in some room in Tomorrowland, it would definitely still be running. But unfortunately, Epcot does have that model where they separate everything into pavilions. It is super cool, and the buildings are beautiful, and the word pavilion feels very retro-futuristic. But a pavilion is like a human body, if the heart and lungs stop working, you're in trouble, even if the liver is doing okay. What I'm trying to say is Body Wars was the heart and lungs, and Cranium Command was the liver. And yeah, the heart and lungs were not doing so well. As I said, Body Wars used the exact same kind of ride system as Star Tours, so when it opened it was very popular because at the time Florida did not have a Star Tours, it was only in California. But, two months later, Florida got their own Star Tours. And for some reason, given the choice, people preferred the version of the ride that had popular movie characters and didn't end with people vomiting all over the floor. And this was bad news for Cranium Command, too! It was a show, not a ride, so, while people enjoyed it just fine when they were already in the pavilion, It wasn't enough of a draw on its own to get people to walk out there. If you've never been, Epcot is a big, spread out, beautiful park with all these large pavilion buildings And between the pavilions, you're really just gonna see, like, unshaded concrete footpaths in the bright Florida sun. Cranium Command had been relying on Body Wars, the only ride in the pavilion, to bring people out to the building. Meanwhile, from a management perspective, that one full scale ride was taking a lot of man hours to operate and wasn't seeing a lot of returns from guests. The pavilion did have a sponsorship with MetLife, so that was absorbing a lot of the costs, but then, in 2001, that sponsorship ended, and MetLife did not want to renew. If we still want to go with the human body analogy, let's say this is like if Cranium Command no longer had food. From that point forward, the Wonders of Life pavilion is essentially slowly dying in front of everybody. Management decided that to cut back on those operational costs, they would only open the pavilion seasonally when the park was especially crowded, like in the summer or the Christmastime months. But the pavilion building was also down a footpath and partially obscured by over grown trees. So since it wasn't open year round and wasn't promoted heavily, it was very easy for guests to assume it was closed, forget it was back there, or never learn of its existence in the first place. It puttered on in seasonal operation for awhile, pulling devastatingly low attendance numbers. It was pretty common for Body Wars to have one or two people riding it at a time. And then, in 2007, after it ended its seasonal Christmastime operation, it quietly closed its doors and never opened again. But the story doesn't end there! The pavilion had closed with no pressing reason for its closure, nothing wrong with the attractions, and nothing in mind to replace it, so they just left it there. They locked it up, they let the trees grow out more, they removed the label on the building from the park maps so people just wouldn't think to walk out to it. Yup, pay no attention to this path between buildings 2 and 3. The lobby space would sometimes be rented out for corporate events and for MY WEDDING. No, I'm just kidding, but I would do that. Its most common function became the demo cooking space for Epcot's food festivals, which they run for most of the year. Oh, so that's what that building's called, Festival Center. Inside, they removed any signage to indicate the building had ever been anything but a food demo space. To hide the attractions, for the first several years they just put up temporary walls. People who weren't hip to the theme park jive would stand in there drinking their wine and eating their chocolate nitro truffles, and not realize they were just on the other side of some plywood from a fully intact, abandoned theme park attraction, which I find really spooky and exciting. And you should, too! Like, comment, and subscribe. Every couple months, there was a new rumor about how Disney was going to reopen the attraction seasonally or as part of a special event for, like, annual passholders or something. And they all were in working order– supposedly in 2011, a development team rode the old Body Wars vehicles, uh, because they used them for testing the reboot of Star Tours that was about to open. It is so spooky to me to imagine climbing onto a Star Tours vehicle, when you know it's been walled up and gathering dust for, like, 5 years. Like, is that even safe? Who's testing it? Are you the one testing it? Are you the crash test dummy? I would not, I would, but it wouldn't be a smart decision. But I would do it, yeah And here, as we enter the early 20-teens, we see our next phase of the story. It's sort of heartwarming because the wonders of life did become an attraction again. But just not in a way that Disney intended. It was an attraction specifically for urban explorers [Urban Explorer] "I'm not really sure if this had anything to do with Body Wars, but it's pretty cool just sitting here." Sneaking around off-limits areas of Disney Theme Parks used to be something done primarily by, like... adult men with YouTube channels. You can call it urban exploring, or you can call it trespassing which, that's what it is. But, as with anything that gets views online, it did see its share of copycats in progressively younger children. And Wonders of Life became an easy mark for, like, "Baby's First Urban Exploring" Honestly, if you run a YouTube search for like "Abandoned Wonders of Life" and start scrolling down, it's sort of embarrassing how young some of the people doing this are. I swear some of them are like 12 and under. I mean, I understand why that is, It's not a condemned building so safety isn't really an issue, It's very accessible, the path isn't blocked off, the building isn't even locked half the time, because the various vendors from the food festivals usually wheel equipment in and out for storage And there's a lot of intact old attraction stuff back there so you can get a lot of good footage with minimal effort. Even if you do get caught, it's very low risk. Like, you can just say you got lost and then the theme park employee, who won't believe you, will still just walk you back to your mom who's waiting for you because you're twelve. And then you celebrate by doing like a Fortnite dance or something. So that was the status quo for a good few years. Someone would go back there they'd get a lot of cool pictures of the old attractions. They would snap some selfie footage to incriminate themselves. (Mimicking young boy) Hey what up? It's ya boy, just hanging out somewhere I'm not supposed to be. If you're a cop, like, comment, and subscribe. Peace! But I mean, they wouldn't damage anything while they were back there and I think Disney just kind of decided they were harmless because they didn't seem to crack down that hard and they didn't really put extra security in the building. And I was kind of into it because we got some really good pictures of old animatronics. And we got some really good updates on Buzzy, and this is where we can start to establish a timeline. When urban explorers started going deep enough into the building, they found that the Body Wars vehicles were all still in their hangar bay and ready to launch at any time. They also found that the Cranium Command Theater was still intact. And then, through even more urban exploring, we found that in 2014, the Body Wars vehicles were sadly removed from the building and presumably were torn up for parts to use on the other Star Tours rides in various parks. But even with all that happening, Cranium Command was hanging in there. It looked the same as it had the day it closed. I mean sure, Buzzy started to look a little worse for wear, he started to get a little grubby, some of his hair started falling out, and one of his eyes started to sag. As seen in some 2017 footage, at some point they started to light up Buzzy 24/7 with some kind of horror movie spotlight, presumably to deter vandals, but also maybe just because he's afraid of the dark. And, in some kind of bittersweet news, he was red-tagged. When Disney is considering an area or attraction for demolition, they will go through and put a red archives tag on various things of historical significance in the area. The tag says "Do Not Destroy" right on it and it says that the object is supposed to go to the Walt Disney Archives. I say bittersweet because it was good news that they intended to save Buzzy, And not throw him in the garbage, but it was kind of sad confirmation that they were not going to reopen the attraction. And from then on, the story starts to get a little fuzzy. In early August of 2018, teams of Imagineers and managers are reportedly seen moving in and out of the building. It's rumored that they are evaluating the condition of the show and testing its operation in consideration of possibly reopening it. But again, this is a rumor that we heard a lot for like a decade. I mention that Buzzy was looking worse for wear and his clothes were getting faded and worn, but the next time the urban explorers go in after this Imagineer meeting he has a fresh coat of paint, he's got some shiny new clothes, he's looking pretty good. People saw it as very encouraging that they had bothered to cosmetically fix Buzzy. And, reportedly, they had been testing his hydraulics. So again we were getting rumors of some special event. And I don't know if that was in the plans. I think maybe it was, but now we'll never know. Because, just when things were looking up for old Buzzy, in December 2018, the news drops on Twitter that Buzzy is gone! And not just gone... Buzzy is stolen. Where is our boy? One account says that he was carved out of his perch while his hydraulic lines were still active, spraying hydraulic fluid all over the crime scene like fresh blood. It was very upsetting, okay? We hear a rumor online that police have arrested the urban explorer who most recently took pictures of Buzzy and that they are now searching his house to see if Buzzy is in his house, like, in a closet or something. That all sounds wild, but people start internet sleuthing and find an actual police report. However, the police report is only for the theft of Buzzy's clothes and, gruesomely, his hands. I understand that that's probably because the hands were just an easily removable fixture. However, I like imagining Bob Iger getting, like, Buzzy's pinky in the mail with a ransom note And like, there's hydraulic fluid all over the page. Another interesting twist: the police report for the clothes was filed in mid-August, so that explains the fresh outfit. At this point there's a lot of confusion flying around. Like, "Oh, I guess Buzzy wasn't stolen. I guess it's just his clothes." "Like, I mean that's still really bad, but at least Buzzy's okay." Think again! Another urban explorer goes back into the attraction which apparently is still a thing you can just do, and this guy posts photos to confirm that Buzzy is not where he belongs. The photos, which are very upsetting, show that the hydraulic lines and wires weren't disconnected, they were just hacked through with what looks like a dull blade. It's just this horrible, jagged cut. So where is Buzzy? Where is our boy? There are a few theories, and I'm gonna break 'em down. Theory number one: Buzzy was stolen by an urban explorer. With so many people going in and out of the building, and so many of them seemingly eager to gather some kind of social currency, by getting photos and posting them online, it's not a far leap of lobject-- Lobject? What the– what did I just say?! It's not a far leap of logic to assume that it's going to escalate to trophy hunting. Add to that the fact that, according to a police report, when police questioned the urban explorer whose house they'd searched, they found photographs that were sent from his cell phone in August showing the stolen merchandise in the defendant's vehicle, as well as text messages claiming the stolen merchandise was sold for eight thousand dollars. Uh, that's pretty incriminating. Case closed. I guess he's got Buzzy. But wait! Here is why that doesn't check out. The alleged photos only show Buzzy's clothes. Not Buzzy. The police search of the urban explorer's house did not turn up Buzzy. And let's talk logistics for a minute. Buzzy is an elaborate piece of machinery. He was mounted six or seven feet in the air on a hydraulic arm. There is a maintenance service lift underneath to do repairs, so they could access him that way but they would have to know it was there, and know how to use it. Then, even if you can get yourself up to Buzzy, he's both bolted to his seat, and connected by multiple hydraulic lines. Even pretending you can get him loose, Buzzy weighs at least 300 pounds, and probably closer to 500 pounds. Picture a mini-fridge that you're lifting down over your head, but it's also full of scrap metal, and you put a hat on it. Getting Buzzy down without damage to him or yourself is a several-man operation, and even when you succeed in that, you have to think about how you're going to get him out of the park without security noticing. I do think this is still possible, if you're very determined. I mean they those new covered wagon stroller things for, like, toddlers. If you swaddled Buzzy in enough blankets and pretended he was asleep, you could probably roll him out of the park in that. People would just assume he was your big-headed son. But this is a very daring heist, and would obviously be difficult and extremely risky to try to pull off. So, theory number two: Buzzy was stolen by an employee. This is slightly more feasible in my opinion. People working in certain departments would, in theory, have the ability to bring their own vehicle backstage. Particularly, a vendor with one of the food festivals would not only likely be allowed to bring a van backstage, but would also have free access to the Wonders of Life pavilion. You're supposed to store your equipment and food in there anyway, so you could go in, put Buzzy on one of those metal food cart thingies that they have in movies, throw a tablecloth over him, and just tell everyone he's a very large rotisserie chicken. The reason I consider this less likely is if you're entering as an employee backstage you also have to exit from the backstage. If you're leaving the park as a guest, you can take your big stroller wagon and just blend into a huge crowd and walk right out the main exit. If you're leaving as an employee from backstage you're going to pass through as security checkpoint with a security officer, who is specifically watching you to make sure you're not doing things like leaving with a large, stolen animatronic. Being an employee would grant you certain advantages, but, I also think it would put you under more scrutiny so it would make it a lot harder to pull off. This heist is not going to be a cakewalk just because you work there, unless you're very far up the chain of command. Which, incidentally, brings me to theory number three: It was an inside job! I said before that there were a lot of urban explorers and they were generally harmless. The people habitually trespassing into old attractions were generally fanboys of the parks, so they pose no real threat of vandalism or theft and didn't seem to mean the company any ill will. That kinda shifted in 2018. A new blog surfaced called BackDoor Disney. He'd post sneaky pictures of old animatronics in storage, which was pretty par for the course, And honestly, some pretty good content. Really nice photos. But the longer it went on, the more these pictures were accompanied by very antagonistic captions. I'm not sure how far he got into the Twitter game before deciding to just openly declare war on Disney. It was pretty relentless. He spent months tweeting about how they made him angry, he was done playing nice, they'd never stop him; offering public giveaways of things he had stolen while he was trespassing; tweeting about impersonating employees to sneak backstage. "At this point you're not gonna find me in the parks. So you guys just keep chasing your tails." "Every tweet of mine gets printed and put in a folder. Keep printing, boys." I don't think there was any real threat here. It was pretty transparently just a case of some young guy getting caught up in the fantasy that he was like a secret agent or something. He would even allude to his "team," like he was a member of the resistance. And he went on a couple podcasts, and honest-to-God, had them distort his voice like he was in the Witness Protection Program. Urban exploring was nothing new, but I have to imagine that the combination of his recurring flagrant attempts, and his antagonistic attitude, was at least irritating to Disney's security team. Based on some of his Tweets, they did appear to somehow immediately find out his identity, but they didn't seem able to catch him in the act and actually stop him from trespassing again and again. So, the reason I'm bringing up this one specific guy is... that character I mentioned earlier in the video, of the urban explorer who had his home searched by police, and who allegedly had photos on his phone of the stolen items in his own car, that was this guy. So, hear me out: you're a theme park company, and you have an epidemic of increasingly bold kids trespassing in your backstage areas, taking pictures of your secret stuff, stealing things, maybe knocking things over, maybe posing a risk to themselves. You generally don't love it, and it sounds like a liability waiting to happen, but you can't really stop them all. Then there's this one particularly brash one who keeps doing it again and again, and they made a whole social media account over how they do that. And they keep posting photos. You keep trying to catch them and you never can. They keep flexing on you, making fun of you, directly challenging you on Twitter. You've already figured out this guy's identity but you can't pin him down for anything. But what if something goes missing? Something from the place where he'd just posted pictures of himself trespassing? Something big, and valuable, but not anything you would have an immediate use for. Maybe you were just gonna throw it in the trash anyway. Well if he's implicated in that, you get to send all your Disney cops to his house. You're sending Maximus the horse. You're sending the human man from Bonkers. You're. Um... I can't think of any other Disney cops. Comment YOUR favorite Disney cop below! Obviously, if the guy doesn't have Buzzy, he's not going to jail, but having the cops show up and search your entire house is pretty stressful. It's kind of a violation of your personal boundaries, in almost a poetic justice kind of way. And being arrested is even more stressful. People try to avoid it when they can. I mean, apparently during his interrogation, BackDoor Disney started vomiting everywhere. Which, to me, either indicated that he's very distraught or that he just finished a fun-filled ride on Body Wars! But what I'm saying here is that this might serve as a very convenient cautionary tale against urban explorers. So, that's the logic behind this "inside job" theory. This theory is so exciting and so cinematic, and I would love if it was true, but I don't think it's true. I do love it. But like, keep in mind, filing a false police report is a pretty serious thing to do. This very elaborate proposed scheme could very easily backfire. All it would take is one person letting slip that they hid Buzzy somewhere. Even if we pretend that Disney destroyed all the evidence, they threw Buzzy in an incinerator, all it would take is one employee sharing what they know, and I think if there's anything we've learned, it's that if people have tea to spill, on backstage things happening at Disney, they immediately go on Twitter. For such a big company so concerned with public image, I just don't really see them balancing out the risks and rewards of this and going, "Yes. I like this plan where we abscond with one of our own animatronics, defraud the local police, and frame a man for grand theft." And finally, for our last theory. Theory number four: Buzzy was not stolen and is in the Walt Disney archives. For some people this is an Occam's Razor thing. Who has access to Buzzy? Disney does. The last time we saw Buzzy, he was tagged to go to the archives. We've seen a police report for the theft of his clothes AND hands, but not for the boy himself. We know he's gone from the theater, but Disney has released no official statement as to why. There are rumors that the theater portion of the building is water-damaged or no longer structurally up to code. Either way, people think they're going to tear down all or part of the Wonders of Life pavilion very soon. So maybe Buzzy was simply removed as intended and sent to the archives. I don't think he was. But we'll get into that. Unfortunately, if Buzzy is in the archives, we're very unlikely to ever get any closure or even learn for certain that he is. The Walt Disney Archives are not open to the public. If they were, I would live there. The closest we can really get is by following their Twitter which is amazing! They post so much good stuff. But they are very selective about what they post on their Twitter, as well as which pieces they'll loan out for traveling museum exhibits. You're basically just gonna keep refreshing Twitter at the mercy of their whims. I think in some cases, this mystique is because there are some pieces of theme park history they did not preserve. And I think if they're too transparent about what exactly they do have, people will start to get upset about the things that they don't. Without getting too gory, all I'm saying is, there's a reason they posted a picture of Big Al's guitar, and not the animatronic bear himself. But it's also probably just because they have a lot of stuff, and it's not a museum, it's an archive. So I think lot of it is just in crates or storage units a lot of the time. It's probably a giant warehouse. They can't go digging through boxes all day. The only time soon I think we could possibly hope to see Buzzy would be at the D23 expo this summer. The Archives people always go, they set up a big exhibit, it's usually a lot of old animatronics, and just all their coolest stuff. It's great. At least I heard it's great, but every time I've been it's been like a 5 hour line so I've never gone inside, I've just stood there at the partition with my face pressed against the slats like a Dickensian orphan. But anyway, this whole Archives theory doesn't even sit right with me, and here's why: We saw the pictures of the scene after Buzzy was gone and that did not look like a professional removal. They hydraulic lines and connections were all cut. It looked like a hack job. It looked like they were in a hurry, under cover of night. I feel like an archivist, who's authorized to be there AND an expert, is just gonna unplug it. And like, bring a technician who can undo the bolts and stuff. And, granted, initially I thought-- Remember those rumors about the Imagineers testing the figure to "see if it could run?" And I was like, what if that was true? And they tested Buzzy, and they found that he couldn't run? He was too old, or he needed too much maintenance, or he had water damage or something. So they were like "Okay... this thing doesn't work anymore. We're just gonna put it in the Archives as a display piece." And so I was like, yeah, I guess if it's just gonna be on display, you don't care about preserving the hydraulic lines, so you could just cut through it. And then I was like no, that's really stupid, because if I was going to throw away a microwave oven, I wouldn't walk into my kitchen, take a pair of scissors, and cut the cord– I would unplug it! The reason you unplug the microwave before it goes to the dump is not because you want to be able to use it again. It's because if you know how, it's both faster and safer to just unplug it and walk downstairs. And remember the BackDoor Disney guy? Claimed that the police came to his house, and showed him photos of the gruesome crime scene, with hydraulic fluid sprayed everywhere, and yes, I'm taking it with a grain of salt. I'm taking everything this guy says with like a boulder of salt. Because he's... you know, a criminal. Allegedly! However, if that was all made-up, this guy still knew that Buzzy was not in the attraction before anyone else knew. So it's possible he embellished things in the story, But it doesn't make sense to me that he would be able to accurately guess that Buzzy was gone, unless at least part of that story had happened. Another thing that doesn't line up for me is the mysterious new clothes on Buzzy. Remember, after the clothing theft in August, the Imagineers visited, and after their visit, Buzzy had all-new clothes. At the time, we didn't know the old outfit was stolen, we just thought they'd spruced him up a little in preparation for showing him off or something. But we now at least know the clothes were stolen. With so many trespassers wandering in and out of the building, and a precedent for his clothes already being stolen once before, why are you going to give him new clothes? Okay, you want him to look nice for the Archives, so why wouldn't you wait until his pending removal date– if that's a thing you're planning– and then just give him new clothes in the Archive, where no one is going to steal them? It would be a lot easier then too, because he wouldn't be seven feet in the air and bolted to a chair, he would just be on a table or something. And hey, do you want the plot to thicken even more? I feel like you do. Because that police report that I was talking about, if you read the inventory of stolen items, Buzzy's jacket is listed as stolen, but it is described as a red jacket. So, problem: at the time of the closure of Wonders of Life and in all of the urban explorer photos, Buzzy is wearing his brown bomber jacket. A red jacket for Buzzy does exist. There is some early artwork on a mural of him in a red jumpsuit jacket thing, and there is, like, one photograph of an early version of his animatronic with totally different makeup, totally different styling, and he's wearing a red jumpsuit and like a baseball cap. But that is not Buzzy's classic outfit, and I wasn't even able to find any verification that they actually used this in the attraction. It might have just been like a pre-development thing, like, that was his prototype wardrobe, and then they added all the new stuff. I don't know, I have to assume it was never used int he show, because Buzzy shows up in the animated pre-show, and he's wearing THIS outfit. So, it would be weird if he was wearing a totally different thing when you went inside. The fact that whoever filled out the police report got this wrong means one of two things to me. One, it was some random manager who had never seen Cranium Command, rarely went in the building, and just typed in "Buzzy Cranium Command" on Google Images, and the red jacket image comes up so there were like "Okay, that's that." Or two, the entire story of the theft was fabricated as part of some Disney-wide conspiracy. So it's gotta be the second one. And this Buzzy story has got a fair amount of traction. It's not a trending story or anything, but it was picked up by, like, some real news outlets. If a giant animatronic was actually stolen, that's pretty bad publicity, because it makes it look like Disney World doesn't have good security. So you'd think that if anyone at the company had Buzzy, they would be really keen on showing him to us, to prove that they had Buzzy and that he was not stolen. They don't have to directly acknowledge the controversy. But like, you know, the Archives twitter could just tweet out, like, "Remember Buzzy?" Here's a picture of him at the Archives. Hashtag Throwback Thursday. So, lacking all of that, I feel like it's pretty safe to say that Buzzy's whereabouts are unknown. I'm prepared to eat these words. I hope that he turns up at D23, I'd love to see him. Or hear that he's there see a picture of him on Twitter and the line's too long. If he was stolen, we're probably never going to see him again. Or we're not going to see him for a few years, and then whoever bought him is going to make up some stupid story about finding him in a thrift store, and that the person selling him didn't even know what he was, and then they won't be implicated in the theft. I just hope that person is an actual theme park buff, and not just, like, some hooligan that stole him because they could and now they're breaking him. Buzzy's a cool piece of old technology and he's a unique piece of theme park history, so I hope his new master is taking care of him. And I hope they turn on a night-light for him because he's afraid of the dark. Moving forward, I think we all need to keep a weather eye out for Buzzy. Try to spot him on Craigslist, or in a private collector's garage, or hitching a ride down the interstate. And if you find the boy, you can contact Disney with your tip. Or you could bring the boy to me! That BOY is MINE. BRING ME THE B– For the record, there's literally nothing stopping them from running Body Wars again. I mean, it's literally the same ride system as Star Tours. Just boot up the program in the Star Tours ride. Just for like a limited time thing! They keep doing these theme nights, that are like, "retro themed," and they, they refuse to bring back any actual old rides. Even the ones that are movie-based and would be super easy to do. They could take either Star Tours on either coast and run Body Wars, or the old version of Star Tours. Just put a tarp over C3PO, I can suspend my disbelief. Do it for a whole summer and have throwback summer, like, Disneyland, the next time you have a summer with no new rides opening? Most of it wouldn't even have to be interactive. It could just be like, stuff to take photos of. Like, you could put an old People Mover car up on the old track. Hide a giant rubber squid behind the coral in the Finding Nemo submarine ride. Do a parade that's like miscellaneous floats from previous parades that you just still have in storage. Oh, instead of Tinker Bell flying over the castle, you could just dangle a skyway bucket, and have it swing down from the Matterhorn. And you don't want to alienate little kids, so just put Elsa in the bucket. It's just swinging wildly. And Elsa's there. I've told you guys the secret of the princess wave before, right? It's two with your elbow and then three little quick ones with your wrist. It's maybe a little harder to do when you're swinging wildly in the winds from a gondola. Also, I wasn't kidding about any of that.
Why was this posted in nonmurdermysteries? Who says Buzzy didn't get murdered? I have a theory that OP knows more and has Buzzy locked away in his basement.
I realize Jenny's video is a bit long, but it's interesting and entertaining. Totally worth it, IMO. :)
This was interesting, thanks.