The Dark Side of Disney - Leonard Kinsey [55]
Path Shane swam from River Country to Discovery Island
Once you hit land, you basically had no idea what was there, right? I mean, there could be polar bears like in “Lost”! Were you jumping at every little noise? Was it stressful being there, or was the total abandonment and desolation peaceful in some way?
Yeah, we had absolutely no clue what we were going to run into. We were definitely tense pretty much the entire time we were there. We were most definitely NOT alone on that island, there must have been thousands of birds nesting on the island and they all made their presence known. There were a lot of crashes and movement going on in the woods around us and everything was incredibly overgrown. We also were trying to use as little lights as possible to avoid being seen from the land so we really had no idea what was in the woods around us. We did take some video footage while there, I’m sure at some point I’ll get it digitized and share it on my site for people to be able to have a better idea of what it was like on that island.
WTF was with the snakes in the jars and Coke bottles?! Any theories about that?
Your guess is as good as mine. Maybe they were snakes that were found on the island that someone kept to try and identify?
And you had a run-in with vultures?!
Yeah, they were relatively young and hadn’t grown feathers in. They were in a collapsed building and were not terribly happy to see us. They made a lot of hissing noises and charged at us a few times trying to scare us off. We took a few photos and a bit of video and left their little area.
You’ve explored many corporate ruins; how does Discovery Island compare to the rest of them, and what does leaving a theme park to rot instead of cleaning it up and/or bulldozing it say about Disney as a company?
Discovery Island is a pretty unique thing in that it is totally abandoned and is reverting to a natural state. Most of the other theme park related things I’ve seen are behind the scenes areas or are only temporarily closed. I don’t think it really makes a lot of sense to bulldoze the island, from what I saw there weren’t a ton of buildings to begin with, just a lot of wilderness. I think letting the island revert to nature is a pretty obvious choice if they don’t have a viable business plan for revamping it.
Any official kick-back from Disney? I know you waited until the statute of limitations ran out to post about the story, but there was talk of them banning you from the parks for life….
I haven’t heard anything from Disney in any official way, but I also haven’t tried going to any of their parks. It wouldn’t be the end of the world if I were banned from the parks for life. If anything, it would make for a good story to tell.
Your series of nudes are absolutely stunning. Have you done any WDW nudes?
Thank you, unfortunately I haven’t had the chance to shoot any nudes at WDW. I’m not really sure Discovery Island would work for my series, but I’m open to the possibility if I found a location that was good enough for it.
What’s next for you? Any upcoming Urban Exploration projects on the horizons that you can talk about?
I’ve got a few things in the works, but I really don’t like talking about that sort of stuff before I do it for obvious reasons. This year I’ve also been focusing more on having some gallery shows and establishing a bit of a presence in the art world.
Thanks, Shane! Be sure to visit Shane’s website at http://shaneperez.blogspot.com, where you’ll find all of the photos from that evening, along with an incredible gallery of nude photographs taken in a variety of abandoned industrial locations.
INTERVIEW WITH HOOT GIBSON
Next up is Hoot Gibson, of the recently infamous Hoot and Chief duo. These two seemingly came out of nowhere in 2010 and shocked the WDW fan community with their blog at http://mesaverdetimes.blogspot.com, which features extraordinary stories of off-limits explorations of Horizons, the much-loved EPCOT ride that was torn down in late 1999 to make way for