It tells the story of an unemployed father having increasingly bizarre experiences and disturbing visions on the last day of a family vacation at the Walt Disney World Resort.

Due to Disney's reputation of being protective of its intellectual property, the cast and crew used guerrilla filmmaking techniques to avoid attracting attention, such as keeping their scripts on their phones and shooting on handheld video cameras similar to those used by park visitors.

On the last day of his family's vacation at Walt Disney World, blue-collar worker Jim White gets fired for an unknown reason, during a phone call with his boss at the Contemporary Resort Hotel.

The family leaves their hotel room and takes the monorail to the park alongside two French teenage girls, Isabelle and Sophie, who pique Jim's interest, unbeknownst to his wife Emily, and their two children Elliot and Sara.

During the rides, Jim has a series of bizarre and disturbing hallucinations, such as the faces of animatronic characters warping and taking on evil appearances, and his family verbally abusing him.

Jim awakens in a secret detention facility under Epcot's Spaceship Earth where he sees pictures of a naked woman he imagined on the Soarin' ride, and video screens displaying events that happened earlier.

A scientist discusses Jim's flights of fantasy and imagination, revealing that he is part of an experiment by the Siemens Corporation ever since he first went to the theme park as a child with his father.

His boss is in on the conspiracy and his firing was all part of the plan along with the closure of the Buzz Lightyear ride, just as he and Elliot approached the boarding area.

After damaging the instrument panel with medical ointment and decapitating the scientist, who turns out to be an android, Jim escapes the laboratory through a sewer.

After returning to the hotel room with Sara, Jim suffers from digestive distress, and vomits up a large amount of blood and hairballs, which he recognizes as symptoms of cat flu, brought on by Sophie spitting on his face earlier, unknowingly infecting him.

Cleaning staff arrive to remove the proof, with one of them filling Elliot's head with false memories of riding the Buzz Lightyear attraction.

After attending two other film schools, he graduated from Full Sail University in another Central Florida town, Winter Park, as the class valedictorian.

The unique nature of the film shoot dictated steps not normally taken in filmmaking, such as charting the position of the sun weeks in advance since they could not use lighting equipment.

They spent ten days in Florida, then returned to California for two weeks at Disneyland, making the resort depicted in the film a combination of both properties.

[13] "At one point, I even made the camera department shave off their facial hair and dress in tourist attire, which almost provoked a mutiny," says Moore.

"[12] Moore was comfortable with the result because of the surrealistic, dreamlike quality it created, forcing viewers to see the familiar sights of the Disney parks in a new way.

One required waiting in a long line for the Buzz Lightyear ride at Disneyland, and the actors rode It's a Small World at least 12 times to get the scene right.

[10] With the photography done, Moore took the film to South Korea to edit to prevent Disney from finding out; he also refused to tell most of his close friends what he was doing.

Content proprietary to Disney, such as the lyrics to "It's a Small World" and footage from Soarin', was removed from the film to avoid copyright infringement.

The site's critical consensus reads: "Conceptually audacious but only intermittently successful in execution, Escape From Tomorrow is nonetheless visually inventive and darkly surreal.

It is not possible that I just saw a film in which it is suggested and then shown that the various Disney princesses all work as high-priced hookers who sell their wares to wealthy Asian businessmen.

"[17] Stephen Zeitchik of the Los Angeles Times called it "one of the strangest and most provocative movies this reporter has seen in eight years attending the Sundance Film Festival".

"None of it is as scary or as funny as it should be," the former wrote, "and what starts out as a sly thumb in the eye of corporate power ends up as a muddled and amateurish homage to David Lynch".

[24][25] The film premiered on October 11, 2013, opening in thirty theaters in the United States, eventually reporting total box office grosses of $171,962.

"Though the filmmakers may have committed trespass when they broke Disney World's rules and if it violated the terms of entry on their tickets, the film itself is a different matter," he wrote on The New Yorker's blog.

"As commentary on the social ideals of Disney World, it seems to clearly fall within a well-recognized category of fair use, and therefore probably will not be stopped by a court using copyright or trademark laws.

To make a trademark-infringement case against Moore, he continued, Disney would have to convince a court that the use of its protected imagery in the movie could reasonably lead viewers to believe that it had a role in the film's production, and he did not think that was a plausible argument.

[15]At Slate, Aisha Harris allowed that this was a possibility, especially if children were filmed without their parents' consent, but noted "the law on that issue is not black and white either.

"[28] Disney did not return reporters' calls or emails for comment, nor did it take any legal action during the festival, although it confirmed to CNN that it was "aware" of the movie.

"[7] According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney chose to avoid responding to the film altogether, rather than seeking legal action, in an effort to prevent increased publicity.