Creepy, Unknown, and Abandoned Disney

Isle After Magnificent Isle- Mowgli's Palace

There is a well known story about a 'Disney' owned property called Mowgli's Palace. I was asked by one of my friends, who had been reading this book, why I had not done anything about Mowgli's Palace. So I told her I would. Here it is:

THE STORY

There is a well known story about a 'Disney' owned property called Mowgli's Palace. Located in Emerald Isle, North Carolina; Disney saw this as opportune property to expand their kingdom enterprise. Anyway, as the story goes, construction started in the 1990s and as the 'Mowgli's Palace' title suggests, it was jungle-themed with a palace in the center. Mowgli, from The Jungle Book, was the center of attention with the common theme of alone-in-the-jungle-with-wild-animals-as-your-friends being the center of this resort. Just look at how the author of the Creepy-pasta explained his/her reason for it, "There as a lifelike statue of a python, maybe eighty feet long, coiled up and "sunning" itself on a pedestal right in the center of the area. It was almost time for the sun to start setting, so the light fell onto the object in the PERFECT way for a photograph. I approached the python and snapped a photo. Then I stood on my toes and snapped another. I moved closer again to get the detail of its face. Slowly, casually, the python lifted its head, looked directly into my eyes, turned, and slithered off the pedestal, across the grass, and into the trees. All eighty feet of it. Its head long disappeared into the woods before its tail even left the sunning spot. Disney had released all their exotic animals onto the grounds. Right there on my floor-plan map was the "Reptile House". I should have known. I'd read about the sharks at Treasure Isle, and I should have KNOWN they'd done this." According to the author, "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"." The Creepy-pasta goes into how Disney showed concept art to the townspeople who got pissed and how the resort just shut down weeks after it was complete. No one knew what to think or do but the townspeople were happy about Dsiney's loss and they really showed it through destroying everything and writing 'Abandoned by Disney' all over. After explaining the past, the author goes into how they "honestly didn't give the place another thought since hearing it closed over a decade ago. I live maybe four hours from Emerald Isle, so really I only heard the rumblings and didn't experience any of it first-hand." And how they had, "read this article from someone who had explored the Treasure Island resort and posted a whole blog about all the crazy shit he found there. Stuff just... left behind. Things smashed, defaced, probably ruined by the disgruntled former employees who had lost their jobs." (We know better that it wasn't disgruntled employees now don't we...? ehem... chapter 12... ehem)

"Well, what I'm getting at is that this blog about Treasure Island got me thinking. Even though many years had passed since its closing, I figured it might be cool to do some "Urban Exploration" at Mowgli's Palace. Take some photos, write about my experience, and probably see if there was anything I could take home as a memento. I'm not going to say I wasted no time in getting there, because honestly it took me another year after I first found that Treasure Island article to get around to going up to Emerald Isle. Over the course of that year, I did a lot of research on the Palace resort... or rather, I tried to. Naturally, no official Disney site or resource made any mention of the place. That had been scrubbed clean." After talking about research for the author's intended 'mission', he/she finally went to the abandoned 'palace'.

 The drive was long, much like the drive to any of the Walt Disney World parks, with lots of plants on their side. Overgrown invasive species side-by-side with the natural plants/flora.  Going into extreme descriptive detail about the outside of the 'palace', the author enters the property and sees tons of 'Abandoned by Disney' signs painted on any available surface. Going into the kitchen, lobby, past some rooms and bathrooms, outside, and finally to a set of stairs, locked behind a floor-to-ceiling metal gate. On the gate was a real sign that exclaimed, "MASCOTS ONLY! THANK YOU!" This made the author excited due the padlock on the gate, and there could be some groovy (Yes, I typed groovy) stuff back there. Padlock still intact = no one had been down there since they closed.