The Kingdom Keepers: Disney After Dark

“It wasn’t cool for a girl to show she liked a boy any more than the opposite. Boys and girls seemed to spend a lot of time and energy trying to convince one another that they didn’t exist.”

Finn and Amanda go on their first date to the Magic Kingdom. Both kids are popular, and neither wants to express too much interest in the other, for fear of being thought overly dependent. They’re friendly and smart, though, which simply makes them like each other all the more. The quickly discover that they work well together and enjoy the company.

“‘I can help you, Finn. I want to help you. But you’ve got to let me in.’ He saw something behind her eyes, as if she knew more than she was letting on. Or was that just another girl trick? Finn couldn’t think what to say.”

Finn must decide whether to risk Amanda’s faith in him by telling about his strange nighttime walk through the Magic Kingdom. She’s proven herself a resourceful ally, but she might walk away if she disbelieves his hard-to-trust story. Besides, he likes her and doesn’t want to ruin their new friendship. 

“It isn’t safe.”

This line occurs eight times in the book, a constant warning that the kids are involved in something dangerous. Their task might sound like fun, but it puts their lives in peril. The hosts, still children, are placed into this situation by adults who don’t themselves quite know what the risks are, and that makes the kids’ predicament all the more dangerous.

“Three nights ago at the end of the Fantasmic show, the dragon set Mickey on fire. Obviously, that’s not supposed to happen. Mickey is supposed to win. He jumped into the water. He’s all right. The crowd laughed. They didn’t get it. But Mickey could have…He could have…could be in some serious trouble. And then what?”

Wayne warns the DHIs that the wicked spirits they’re trying to defeat intend to expand their mischief out into the park, the resort, and, later, the entire world. The stakes are high, but the kids feel a moral obligation to save the planet from destruction. The Overtakers won’t take kindly to people who interfere, which means the children are in mortal danger.

“There’s a fine line between imagination and reality. An inventor dreams something up, and pretty soon, it’s there on the table before him. A science-fiction writer envisions another world, and then some space probe finds it. If you believe in something strongly enough, I think you can make it happen.”

Wayne tells the DHI kids that there’s a magic to belief that can alter reality. It starts in the mind, which thinks up new possibilities, and these ideas begin to affect everything, from a person’s actions in pursuit of those potentials to perhaps even the reshaping of the world itself.

“‘If the hero and heroine go off to live happily ever after, then what happens to the villains, witches, sea monsters, and evil stepmothers?’ Finn said, ‘You’re saying that because the park makes them real, they are real?’ ‘I’m saying if you believe strongly enough, anything can happen, and millions of people, kids and adults, visit this park […] every year. And they—’ ‘Believe,’ Finn said. ‘In the bad and the good,’ Charlene said. ‘Exactly. Yes, they do. And there’s power in that belief,’ Wayne said.”

Wayne augments his argument about thoughts becoming real by asserting that the very strength of people’s belief in the magic of Disney World invokes the Magic Kingdom’s fictional characters, good and bad, making them come to life at night. The bad ones wreak havoc that can damage the resort and put guests, cast members, and staff at risk. Another kind of belief, one that overrides the dark magic from the Disney stories, may become necessary.

“‘What is inevitable once evil gains power?’ Philby answered, ‘It wants more. Empires. Wars. That kind of stuff.’ ‘We call them the Overtakers,’ Wayne whispered.”

In the time-honored tradition of fantasy novels, the good guys—Finn, Charlene, Philby, Maybeck, Willa, and Imagineer Wayne—must fight and defeat the forces of evil. In this case, the baddies are embodied spirits of the arch fiends in Disney stories. They’re called Overtakers because they threaten to take over the Magic Kingdom and then the rest of the world.

“‘What puts us in a bad mood when just a minute before we felt so good?’ Wayne asked. ‘What makes us afraid of the dark when we know perfectly well there’s nothing bad out there? What explains that sometimes we think of a person and two seconds later the phone rings, and it’s that same person calling us?’ Again, Wayne looked at the kids one by one, his face deadly serious. ‘Not all such forces have to do with hats and rabbits. There are forces bigger than all of us. Good, and bad.’”

The kids are just beginning to wrap their heads around the idea that the evil they face isn’t just an image on a movie screen but a real thing that might injure or kill them. Though the challenge ahead has aspects of a game, the opponents won’t play fair, and the kids won’t be able to pick up their things and leave whenever they feel like it. The fictional has become real, and the real has become deadly.

“The DHI servers clearly control our holograms, but why they could affect us as humans is really weird. In crossing back over we must take something of our DHIs with us. We don’t see it, we don’t feel it, but it’s there. That might explain how messing with the servers made us feel faint. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I’m not real keen on someone else controlling me. I’m not loving that idea. I think the time will come when we’d rather have control of the servers ourselves.”

Maybeck eloquently outlines one of the book’s chief mysteries: how the holographic servers can pull the actors who made the hologram recordings back to the park at night as holograms themselves. Even worse, Maybeck suggests, are the hiccups in server function that cause them to faint in the daytime. It’s bad enough to be pursued by evil robots, but it’s even worse to be controlled by a computer. The teens realize they must, somehow, regain at least some portion of control from the servers.

“[…] Jez looked over at Finn. She’d known he was there all along. Noticing this, Dillard said, ‘You think she likes you?’ Finn said, ‘She’s a girl. No telling what she thinks.’”

Not quite 14, Finn has begun to attract the interest of girls, including Amanda and Jez. He still doesn’t quite know what to do with them, finds them mysterious, and considers them a source of trouble. To become involved with them might get Finn in over his head. Besides, he’s already busy enough juggling home, school, Disney Host fame, and the dreaded Overtakers.

“When I do things I shouldn’t do, my mother says I need a new pair of glasses—that I should be looking differently at the choices I make.”

Amanda explains to Finn that sometimes she must back up a step and look at a problem from a different perspective. Her words themselves change the boy’s viewpoint, and he hits on the idea of using the 3-D glasses to help the kids solve the Stonecutter mystery. Amanda’s mind seems years ahead of most kids. This both attracts and unsettles Finn, who can’t be sure how a young teenage girl acquires such powers, or what her real purpose might be.

“Finn asked the obvious. ‘How did those dolls come to life?’ Philby answered with a question. ‘How do we come to life?’”

The mystery of the living animatronic robots puzzles and confuses the team, but the question helps get them thinking in ways that might help solve the Stonecutter puzzle. Willing now to face these difficult questions, the DHIs are beginning to stretch their brains and wrap them around the challenging problems they must figure out if they’re to overcome the Overtakers.

“[…] there must be a stone you push to get inside.’ ‘But that’s in a computer game!’ Charlene protested, sweeping one arm across the scene. ‘This is real life!’ They all looked at her glowing, transparent arm. ‘Or sort of,’ she added.”

Part of the challenge the DHI kids face is learning how to use their own holographic bodies while they’re in the nighttime Magic Kingdom. Finn nearly drowns at Splash Mountain until he realizes he’s made of light and can swim where he wants. On the other hand, Buzz Lightyear toy lasers and Small World dolls become dangerous at night and can damage the kids’ physical bodies back in their bedrooms. Navigating this unique form of reality adds a puzzle on top of a puzzle, and solving both could mean the difference between life and death.

“Amazing things happen when we put our minds to it. There is a saying that seeing is believing. But believing is seeing, as well. And touching. And hearing. Connecting.”

Wayne expands on his theory that a person’s beliefs help determine the reality of life. Already, Finn has seen how his holographic body can go through things if he believes it’s possible. The Overtakers themselves arise from the beliefs of millions. What the DHIs believe will help determine the outcome of their battle with the evil spirits.

“‘And where would they hide him?’ ‘On the boat, maybe,’ Philby said. ‘Possibly,’ Wayne said, though his tone of voice suggested that he didn’t give the idea much credence. ‘Well, listen, Obi-Wan,’ Philby said sarcastically. ‘Why don’t you tell me and Luke here where to find him, and we’ll make for hyperspace.’”

Philby, frustrated by Wayne’s continual air of mystery, makes a sarcastic joke that ridicules the old man’s similarity to the famous Star Wars Jedi knight who often spoke in riddles. In fact, Wayne doesn’t have the answers, and he mustn’t interfere too much with the kids’ process as they search for solutions to puzzles about the Overtakers that only they can solve.

“For nearly a week, the kids met inside the park after going to bed, but only for a matter of minutes. As quickly as possible they would use the button to return home, having looked for no more clues. They caught up on sleep. They did their homework. They rejoined their families. Maybeck’s abduction had worn them out and frightened them to the point of not wanting to continue.”

The task of defeating the Overtakers isn’t a mere child’s game, where the players get to go home, safe and sound. This game is for keeps, and the possibility that they could die etches deeply into the kids’ confidence. They’re too young for this amount of responsibility, yet, with their strange abilities as a holographic night patrol, they’re the only people in the world who can do anything about the otherwise invisible Overtakers. It’s no wonder they want to take some time off, recharge their energies, and just be normal for a while. For them, though, normalcy can’t last.

“Philby was the kind of smart that made other schoolkids ask him to do their homework.”

It’s an adventure novel, but the story also contains little writing gems, like this quote—which, in a few words, sketches Philby’s character with humor and clarity. It captures both his personality—intellectual, confident, and thorough-minded—and his usefulness to the group as a boy who can coolly solve problems during the heat of a crisis.

“‘You’re afraid of her,’ Willa said softly. ‘You created us because you’re afraid of her.’ ‘Are you old enough to understand the saying: “Don’t shoot the messenger”?’ Wayne asked. Finn had heard the expression before, and judging by the faces of the others, they had too. He thought he understood Wayne’s message. ‘You’re not the one who created us,’ he said. ‘So who did?’”

Wayne’s aura of mystery hides the fact that he’s not in charge of the DHIs. He didn’t even create them, but he must use them to fight the Overtakers. The kids now have a new puzzle to solve: Their Disney handlers stretch back further into the past than they thought, and it’s possible that Wayne’s assignments are but the tip of an iceberg of duties that the kids may have to face.

“He led a secret life now. Until this moment he hadn’t realized just how secret. Worse: until he and the others fixed things, until the growing power of the Overtakers was challenged and stopped, his life wasn’t going to get much better. Staying awake all night. Feeling tired all day. Battling his parents. Telling his mom the truth, which she, of course, found unbelievable.”

Finn’s life has become heroic, but no one knows it beyond the team and a few friends. The stresses are real, and there’s no relief as long as Maleficent runs free. His life is in danger; he has no choice but to face it directly. Even his parents can’t help, and, if they tried, it’d make things worse. If the team can’t solve their challenge soon, they could be killed, but that would be minor, compared to what would happen to the world.

“[…] Finn said to the witch, ‘You’re head of the Overtakers.’ She cackled an edgy laugh. ‘Me? Head? False compliments will get you nowhere with me, young man. […] My powers are so small and insignificant. Do not waste your breath. I’m an errand runner, that’s all.’”

Maleficent declares herself a mere servant of the actual leader of the Overtakers. This changes everything: Though the kids still have to defeat her, they also must contend with an even more significant threat. This surprise rests atop an earlier one—that Wayne didn’t create the DHIs but knows who did. Layers of authority rise around them from friend and foe. The kids don’t even know who the real shot-callers are.

“I’m afraid you may literally need to run for your lives. Maleficent is not likely to be a good loser.”

Maleficent means business: She’ll kill anyone in her way—and, if the spirit moves her, torture them in the process. Wayne’s warning reminds the DHI team that their lives are on the line, and that they must function at their highest level if they wish to survive. It’s a daunting, fearful task, and Finn and his associates are heroic to face it. They don’t want this job, but they know the world’s safety hinges on the outcome.

“‘You forgot something: evil never wins in the Magic Kingdom.’ She called back, ‘That depends on whose magic it is.’”

Finn’s verbal jab at Maleficent gets a comeback from her designed to plant seeds of doubt in his mind. It’s a classic question, whether good or evil is stronger, and, even in the Disney realm, the answer may be uncertain. Finn only knows that belief can change outcomes, and he believes the good people will defeat the Overtakers.

“We don’t kill anything here. Not even dark fairies. We’ll give her a taste of her own jail—the one you found—for a while. It’ll give us time to determine how much power the Overtakers have gained.”

The Disney ethos of goodness extends everywhere, even to the staff’s treatment of a mortal enemy like Maleficent. Wayne doesn’t want the good people to sink to the level of the bad ones: The captured witch will be confined and observed but not tortured or slain. His comment about Maleficent as a dark fairy recalls the witch’s central role in the Disney film Sleeping Beauty, where she, a fairy not invited to the christening of the princess Aurora, gets revenge by planting a death curse on the infant. This makes clear the level of depraved cruelty to which Maleficent can descend.