Exploring the $200,000,000 Abandoned Disney Castle Village (530 Castles).mp4

There are a few architectural anomalies in this world that leave you scratching your head wondering what the hell were they thinking. After visiting the world islands in Dubai, I wondered if there is any other large-scale projects around the world who, like the world islands, completely abandoned construction prior to completion. And that's when I discovered Borj Al Babas, a 200 million dollar abandoned village of castles in a remote area of northern Turkey that, through their design, ended up looking oddly similar to Disney castles. Beginning construction in 2014, the developers planned for these castle villas to be luxury vacation homes for wealthy tourists. And in fact, 350 of them were originally sold. However, like many unfortunate stories of abandoned places, construction was put on hold when the company went bankrupt in 2018, leaving the hundreds of half-finished castles behind. As I'm still struggling with getting back to the U.S., with visa problems, I decided to go to Turkey with my fellow cinematographer friend Corey Martin to help me capture this experience. Since we haven't gotten to do much with subscribers in a long time, I decided that this adventure in Turkey could be the perfect opportunity to bring two of you along with us. So I put out a message on Instagram to see who in the area would be interested in joining and many of you responded. Eventually, even though it was basically impossible to choose, I'm a huge fan of you guys and I can't even express how excited I am that you're here. The idea of seeking discomfort and loving each other is just incredible to me. So we reached out to them to make sure they had recently tested negative for COVID and met up with them a few days later to go on this adventure. Also brought some gifts. We also brought some gifts. Okay, I only have a couple of these and I wanted to give you guys something. This is the biggest club in Turkey. No, we have some treats. Thank you. Road trip! Honestly guys, okay, I'm not even gonna lie to you. I had the probably one of the worst five-day stretches I've had recently. I had like a mental breakdown last night and I was like not even sure if I was gonna make it but I spoke to Seda. She just made me remember the time that I introduced her to you guys and like how you had an impact on me and stuff and I was just you know what this is maybe just a once in a lifetime chance of me meeting you and then going on an adventure. I just love everything that you do and like the idea of it not just the adventures, not just like doing some crazy stuff but like connecting with people and act like across the world showing everyone that our differences actually don't really matter and that's what's important to me so I'm really grateful that you guys came and chose us. It's probably one of the best days of my life, man. I'm not even kidding. I'm so happy for him. I'm so happy for him. I was just another shock. I went to my parents. I was like I'm going to Moderna on Monday. They were like why? Yesterday my dad was looking at me and like start to laugh because I can't believe you're doing it. So right now we're on the bridge crossing over from the European side of Istanbul into Asia. Wow, it's beautiful. Dude, like do you have like a plan for actually like sneaking in? You know that's a good question. I don't currently have a plan. We discussed it thoroughly last night. What am I dragging you guys into right now? You trust him, right? Yeah. Okay, so this will be the decisive moment with the snow. Wow, there's like immediately more snow. How do you feel driving right now? I feel good. I just a little bit more stressed. Do we need to push? This is not like a little bit of snow. This is an enormous amount of snow. There's three options. One, we figure out a way to get there today. Two, we... Which right now, as I'm overhearing, is unlikely. But again, we'll see. Is that what they're saying? Okay, so tomorrow the roads will be like open or will be, you know, better. You can stay the night and then see tomorrow if it's better. Every other car gets stuck just trying to get up this hill. That's like, okay, I guess we're staying the night. Whoa, there's a naked woman on TV. Film. Thank you. See you soon. This is so funny. I thought literally we would just road trip to the castles, shoot that, and then back in a day. The universe was like... After deciding we would spend the night, we eventually made it through the snow-covered roads to a small lodge nearby, hoping that it would be safe to continue the next day. Okay, how does the snow look? How are we doing, Ata? I think we're doing good now. We're gonna give this a shot. Let's see how this goes. Wow. It is really freaking cold out here. This is... It's way more isolated than I realized. And being here, it's making the whole thing even stranger to understand how someone who had 200 million dollars to spend made this decision. All right, hopefully we get our first glimpse of this place very soon. Oh, wow. What? We just got over a hill and they're just all right here. This is even crazier seeing this in person. The images look surreal, but now that it's in front of us, it's even harder to comprehend that this place exists. All right, let's hit this, guys. We are officially inside the 200 million dollar settlement of Disney castles in the middle of the countryside of Turkey. This is crazy. It looks like I'm in a different country. Should we go inside one of them? Yeah, I think that one's pretty solid. Hello. Let's go up. The door is just open. Someone's already been here recently. There's other footsteps. There's a basement. Wow. Okay, so the basement apparently in these castles was meant for the pool, indoor pool, which is not a bad idea actually. If you rent this with some friends for like a weekend, if there's actually a pool and there's a bunch of other houses, it can be kind of ridiculous to live in a castle for a day. We are arriving at the giant unfinished abandoned mall. This is massive. What do you think? I mean, just the amount of them is sort of ridiculous. Like we thought that we were going to be able to explore this within a certain amount of time, and I feel like we haven't even scratched the surface like what's here. A lot of these unfinished abandoned projects, it always looks like they left halfway through a work day. Like you still see some boots on the ground and gloves and like construction equipment. It's like they left and then they were like we're probably going to come back tomorrow and then they got a phone call and then they were told hey the whole thing is being put on pause and then they were just never brought back. There's still raw materials here that are valuable and that's always the strangest part about going to unfinished construction abandoned places. It's just like thinking about what it must have been like to be a construction worker here when they were doing this and then just being told stop what you're doing and then you just never really found out what happened to it. Let's see if I can get to the top of this one. There's so many of these copy-paste castles to see. It's just the same over and over and over. So I was just looking and checking out the 10 million dollar bucket list after like I made listening to your podcast. Well it says go to LA and do everything you can to work for Yes Theory but I guess this one can count as working with you. So hell yeah I can. I love that man. So you did it. You can take something off. Proud of my friend. We're gonna start making our way back towards the car. Definitely been a worthwhile journey. Did you know that 50% of the people that watch our videos are not subscribed? Really? So what should people do when they watch this video? Subscribe. It's not that hard. It's a button. It's a button exactly. It'll help us fulfill our goal and I actually haven't told even you guys this but our goal for this year is to try to hit 10 million subscribers. It's not insane. You'll get there. That's the goal. Thanks for sending me a message on Instagram. Thanks for answering. It's insane like I've lived here for 19 years in Turkey. I've never you know came here yeah and I really don't know if you know us together you know we would find the confidence and and the courage to do this. This has been really fun. It's insane. I'm so happy. If any one of you is watching this don't give up on your dreams. Keep on believing okay? Yeah. That's great. In a strange way as bizarre as the castles were I'd hope that something comes out of this place one day. To have gotten this far and then left them 80% finished feels like a waste but you never know with places like this especially years after they've been left behind. So whether this turns into homes or into the world's most epic paintball arena either way I'm just curious to see what its future holds. Having been able to go on this little adventure with Seda and Atta filled a gap in our desire to spend more time with our community and we're excited to continue finding more ways to bring you guys along once in a while. On a final note we are going to be giving away a hundred dollar gift card for seek discomfort to someone who likes, leaves a comment on this video and subscribes to our channel. We'll be selecting someone from the comments so make sure to engage below and we'll contact you directly through YouTube. Hello there. Thank you for watching this video. I just want to say that actually on this trip I finished listening to a book called Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin on Audible who actually happens to be our sponsor for today's video. As I've been struggling with sorting out my visa problems this book actually helped me to figure out how to let go of things I can't control and really owning the ones that I can. So if you want to check it out go to audible.com slash yes theory or text yes theory in one word to 500 500 to get one free audiobook and a 30-day free trial. Plus if you sign up now members will have access to the all-new plus catalog that has thousands of select audiobooks, podcasts, audible originals, meditation programs, guided fitness, sleep tracks for better rest and more all included with membership. Audible members will also get one credit every month good for any title in the premium selection of bestsellers and new releases to keep forever. So go to audible.com slash yes theory or text yes theory in one word to 500 500 to get one free audiobook right now and a 30-day free trial. We'll see you next week and yes I've cut my hair and I'm in a kind of a secret location at the moment. More on that soon. There are rooms that are with like two separate beds or with one bed. Yeah two separate beds. Yeah you don't want to wait what you know two separate beds Corey. You wanted a share bed? It's cold. I don't want your massages.