Credit: Dangerous Minds / Mesa Verde Times

So, we can all agree that Disney adults are weird, right?

I won’t lie to you and say that I can’t see the appeal of immersing yourself in a fantasy world. Of shutting out the calamitous, panic-inducing world of 2026 and only interacting with the fictional worlds that gave you joy as a child. Hell, I run tabletop role-playing games, and a large chunk of my spare time is spent doing exactly that.

There is a way of doing that healthily, though. In ways that don’t involve giving most of your income to a billion-dollar corporation and actually help you engage with the world as it is, rather than hiding in childhood nostalgia.

I defy anyone not to be totally bowled over by the parks, though. I’d wager most cynical, jaded realists can’t help but feel a little buzz of that old Disney magic when stepping through the gates of Disney World. When you do so as a wide-eyed child or teenager, one can only imagine how incredible the feeling must be. Two of the people hit hardest by Walt Disney World’s Orlando home base were Dave Ensign and Ed Barlow Jr, who first attended the park as 15-year-olds and were totally bowled over by one ride in particular.

Both of them were utterly enthralled by Horizons, a stunning ride showcasing an imagined future of humanity and the way we could use sea, air, land and space to bring forth a brighter tomorrow. They weren’t alone. Horizons was one of the most celebrated rides in the entire park, so when it suddenly closed in 1994, many were distraught, Ensign and Barlow among them. However, they decided to do something about it.

They decided that if they weren’t going to be allowed into their favourite ride, they’d enter it on their own terms.

But how did they break into Walt Disney World?

What follows reads like a full-on, Mickey-Mouse-ified heist movie.

Ensign and Barlow hatched a plan to document the ride as much as possible before it closed in full, a project that would involve flying right in the face of park security that needed precise timing and a whole lot of daring. You see, Horizons was no rollercoaster. It was a dark ride that took the guests through a series of rooms decked out to look like rooms of the future.

The guests would spend anywhere from 30 seconds to a minute and a half in there, so Ensign and Barlow had that long to nip out of their pods, take as many up close photos of props and set as they could before making it back to their pods in time. This was how the project began, but as a sign of how lax Disney World security was at the time, they decided to go a step further. Jumping on the ride as early as possible, exiting the ride, and simply staying in its bowels for the next 4 hours, walking around it, taking photos, and simply enjoying the experience.

The building Horizons was housed in was far larger than the ride itself, and the majority of it was unused and unmaintained. Thus, Barlow and Ensign made a little world for themselves that they could duck into whenever they wanted, bringing friends along and staying as long as they wished. It wasn’t always safe, as this part of the ride was absolutely not intended to have people in it, but the two friends made a world for themselves in the time they had left with the ride.

Finally, the ride closed for good in January 1999, and the duo were part of its last hurrah along with a large group of die-hard fans. Ten years later, they started a blog documenting their experiences breaking into the ride (under the aliases Hoot and Chief, they had broken several laws after all) called the Mesa Verde Times and became Disneyworld legends.

You see, it is possible to embrace your inner child and do so without lining the pockets of billionaires! May hundreds of others follow their lead.