My Experience With ‘Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy,’ Disney, and Accessibility
I grew up on comic books, so naturally I was the target audience when the first wave of early-2000s superhero movies rebooted franchises like Spider-Man and Batman, offering my generation some of the greatest films of all time – superhero or otherwise. Films like Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man and Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight defined my friend groups, the types of inside jokes we made, and continued my childhood adoration for the rare superheroes who weren’t simply Superman – invincible, perfect – making them feel relatable and even mature. But, like many people, superhero fatigue set in rather immediately, whether it was the Andrew Garfield re-reboot of the Spider-Man films or the absurdly interconnected Avengers universe. I consequently tuned out of all things vaguely superhero for the better part of a decade.
There was no single turning point for the reignition of my enjoyment of superhero IP. Being dragged to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness to supervise a few hundred high school seniors was far from a rekindling, as I left the theater confident that this type of film offered me nothing anymore, aside from raw nostalgia. Perhaps it began with my cynical RedBox rental of the 2018 Marvel’s Spider-Man game for the Playstation, a game that I expected to return that weekend but after wiping a few tears, decided to full-on purchase to keep in my collection. Whatever the cause, I found myself in the winter of 2022 purchasing a copy of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy for my Steam Deck, ready to sink into what was then an incredibly strong word-of-mouth for this unexpected hit that some people argued was fully enjoyable even if, like me, you hadn’t seen the corresponding films.
I knew nothing about the Guardians of the Galaxy IP, aside from a vague notion of it being about a group of superheroes, one of which my former students constantly quoted to my annoyance: “I am Groot.” Almost immediately, I fell in love. Guardians presented a cheeky angle to the superhero tropes I had grown so tired of over the years. From the cheesy hair metal aesthetic to the incessant banter interweaving the game’s mixture of combat and exploration, there was nothing about Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy that missed the mark for me. I was ready for the banter to grate on me, as it did so many reviewers at the time; I was ready to grow tired of the third-person action shooting, a genre of which I had played so many entries that year; but hour after hour, I became more engrossed.
Why I Love Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy
One of the reasons Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy clicked so well for me is its commitment to distinctive characters. It’s obvious, I’m sure, to someone who had already seen the films, but I was expecting Whedon-esque self-aware dialogue (of which there was plenty, mind you) and instead I received heartwarming connections and genuinely great jokes that had me in stitches as I laid in my hotel bed. Over the course of the game, I felt like I got to know characters like Peter Quill better than most of the game-of-the-year contenders from that season’s Game Awards. Drax had me chuckling almost as frequently as he spoke, and the old-married-couple nature of he and Rocket’s turbulent friendship could have been a full game on its own, as far as I was concerned. Hours later, I felt myself wiping away fallen tears from my face as I saw how much pain and sacrifice these characters had endured. I was so enraptured that, like Mass Effect 2, I thoroughly exhausted the side missions and quests in the pursuit of growing closer to these characters that, by now, felt incredibly personal.
I could gush about Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy on its own, and someday I will write more about it than my brief piece last year, but I share all of my unexpected joy and love for this game for the sake of a secondary conversation that I could only ever have because of my unique relationship to this series.
Disney, Neurodivergence, and Do-Overs
My partner is obsessed with Disney, to the point where I rib her and call her a “Disney Adult.” After swearing off theme parks for my entire 20s, we visited The Magic Kingdom in Orlando, Florida, earlier this spring for her birthday. I already find it hard to return to Florida for visits, given the fact that the state has so aggressively stripped back basic civil rights for trans people. But this trip happened around a month after I had finally started seeing a therapist to help deal with my autism which often manifests via intense social anxiety. Not to mention, I had recently become sober from alcohol just a few weeks prior. In other words, I have rarely been so far out of my comfort zone as I found myself on this trip to Disney World.
Obviously, I wanted to have a great time for my partner’s annual birthday trip to Disney, and the day started off enjoyable enough. But somewhere around mid-day, a few hours into our visit at the parks, she expressed a strong desire to visit the Haunted Mansion ride – her favorite. Naturally, we queued up. Armed with little more than our cell phones, I felt my stomach sink as the queue time was hours long. I remember feeling irritation about queue lines as a kid, when I visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, Busch Gardens, or Animal Kingdom. But I was completely unprepared for how the anxiety that had severely manifested in my mid-to-late 20s would take over this experience.
Functionally, I had a meltdown. I forced myself through the day, but internally I was miserable. Coupled with the pressure that this was my partner’s special day and I didn’t want to ruin it, I was still learning how to communicate my needs in a way that wasn’t framed as an angry outburst of blaming and complaining. So I felt like I couldn’t say anything at all. I just kept pushing myself from queue to queue, feeling worse every time, and resenting this entire trip. My partner checked in multiple times to gauge how I was doing, but I deflected due to some twisted rationalization that everything would explode if I let out my emotions. Evening hit before the firework show, and I started sobbing in Cosmic Ray’s Starlight Café. It all came out. The day wasn’t completely ruined at this point – if anything, my partner was relieved to finally know what was causing me to go so nonverbal. But I had bottled up too much, and I barely remember the fireworks, much less the monorail home.
Our following day at Disney Springs was much more manageable and enjoyable, but it was impossible to shake the dark cloud over what had occurred at the Magic Kingdom. Several conversations later, my partner suggested contacting Disney to discuss my meltdown at the parks and, to our astonishment, we were given a re-do: two free tickets to any park, redeemable within one calendar year of our botched day. I resolved to look into Disney’s accommodations for disability before we next attended the parks.
Over the following months, I worked tirelessly with my therapist and partner to work through this awful day at the parks – exploring the causes of what happened, discussing strategies and accommodations to work through difficult emotional experiences like my day at Magic Kingdom, completed many books and worksheets on managing social anxiety, and finally started researching interoception and alexithymia. Meanwhile, Disney drastically gutted their Disability Access Services (DAS).
Despite all the work, the many tear-filled discussions, and the best of intentions, it was not enough. By the time I was ready to speak with DAS and hammer down accommodations for our re-do visit to the parks, the new policies determined that I am not a “severe enough case,” to quote the cast member I spoke with on the DAS call. For me, the biggest issue I face in managing my emotions is feeling “stuck” – like I can’t leave a situation or discuss how I feel about it and start actively spiraling – which, previously, would simply be handled by requesting queue return times. If, for example, we wanted to revisit Haunted Mansion, I could speak with a cast member, receive a return time, and then decompress at a nearby bench while we waited instead of feeling that inflexible “stuck”-ness. But whatever a “severe enough case” is, in Disney’s revised definition, I do not cut it – even with a diagnosis. The best they could do was put a note on my account from a supervisor documenting this discussion.
Coincidentally, as I write, USA Today reports Professor Barbara Burgess-Lefebvre’s recent research, finding that these changes to Disney’s disability policies have impacted nearly everyone who previously relied on DAS to feel like an enjoyable day at the parks was possible for them. The study of 300 individuals reports that these changes to DAS have resulted in decreased attendance, increased anxiety, discriminatory exclusions, and dismissive interactions. These findings completely represent my most recent experience at Epcot, where, above all, my partner and I wanted to experience the incredibly popular Guardians of the Galaxy ride.
Though my partner has been a lifelong Disney Passholder, I felt like our re-do at Epcot carried additional importance to a usual trip; I had effectively put a damper on her birthday and this was my chance to finally make it up to her through actions, after so many words. When we entered Epcot early that November morning, our first destination was Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind – a roller coaster ride from an IP we now both enjoyed, between my love for the game and our having watched the first two films together in the interim between trips.
Despite our arrival time to Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind, a cast member explained that we would not be able to enter a physical queue but instead a virtual one, yet we would have to wait until 1PM to enter the virtual queue due to the ride’s staggering popularity. Though I had braced myself to have to assertively advocate for my accommodations this time around, the virtual queue felt like a great solution to my specific problem. By giving us a return time via a virtual queue, we thought, we were effectively being given the same sort of accessibility services that I had requested in the first place. I remember saying that all rides should work this way.
Due to the nature of Disney’s virtual queues, we found ourselves with around eight hours to spare before returning to Cosmic Rewind. We had timed our trip with Epcot’s annual Food & Wine festival, so we began the circuit around the parks to partake in the libations and fill out our “passport.” The parts of this day we had control over were truly delightful, especially due to how much work we had both put into communication, taking care of each other’s needs, and overviewing what to expect from our trip in advance. That being said, we encountered a few frustrations with regards to DAS that overshadowed parts of our visit.
The Feeling of Being Rejected by Disney’s Disability Access Services
Disney’s revisions to DAS made an already difficult day tougher than it needed to be. My first encounter with this difficulty was the line for the Frozen ride. When speaking with the DAS cast member, I requested a script of precisely what I should say to cast members so as to receive accommodations on rides without having to explain the whole autism, social anxiety, last-time-was-a-disaster story each time. Feeling prepared but nervous enough to be sweating, I followed my instructions: I approached a cast member at the beginning of the queue, read my script, and was – despite everything – turned away. As discussed on my call about the “per-ride basis,” Frozen is a ride that requires you to make a “queue attempt” before they permit any accessibility services.
Another quirk of my neurodivergence is that, when I arrive prepared to a situation that goes completely differently than I was anticipating, I freeze up. When pressed, the cast member elaborated that a queue attempt meant trying to make it through the line anyway, even if you have a disability that makes that sort of experience hell, and then they, the accommodations gods, shall grant you the privilege of considering your request. The response felt patronizing and dismissive. Obviously this world deeply struggles with validating “hidden” disabilities like mine, but to make the point blunt: you wouldn’t require a person in a wheelchair to leave it outside of the line first, just to make sure they need it. A decent person, or in this case, a decent policy, believes people when they tell you what they need.
Since I was frozen up mentally, it didn’t instantly occur to me to clarify what the queue attempt truly entailed. I was too busy feeling rejected and trying not to shut down or cry to think clearly. But who decides what counts as a queue attempt, really? If I walk into the line and immediately turn around, is that an “attempt”? If I stand there with a ten-minute timer and then leave, have I made an “attempt”? Or do I have to start screaming and crying and making a terrible scene for others, embarrassing myself and my partner in the process, before my accommodations are seen as genuinely important? A truly accessible service would explain these terms and at least give the benefit of the doubt.
It took the next half hour of dissociation to feel my body return to normal as I gradually dethawed, unpacking these feelings and thoughts with my partner. Off-putting though it was, we agreed to let her advocate for me from now on, since my experience with the Frozen cast members freaked me out so much. My partner was willing to overcome her own neurodivergence to support me, but she shouldn’t have had to.
The fundamental problem I have with Disney’s revised DAS is that it feels aggressively conservative, like accessibility is a zero-sum game, a limited pi-chart, or a finite resource that can’t be replenished. The new Disney policies remind me of selfish people complaining about stimulus checks during the height of COVID-19. The rhetoric is that we should help less people because a small percentage of people receiving help don’t “need” it. Whether that’s billionaires and CEOs receiving the stimulus check, nevermind you the millions of paycheck-to-paycheck people who were able to make it another month due to this government assistance. Or whether that’s Disney aggressively stripping back access to DAS, presumably due to the free rider problem – surely, some non-zero percentage of people try to treat DAS like a loophole to their monetized Genie pass system.
The shared logic of stimulus check complainers and the curtailment of accessibility services is disingenuous, at best, because it pretends in bad faith that there is a moral cost to receiving help. But an obvious truth about the world that my passion for video games has taught me is that accommodations make the world better for everyone, not just people with documented disabilities. In the same way that I benefit from subtitles even though I am not hearing impaired, notice that people with hearing impairments are not harmed by my reliance on subtitles. The Velma meme might be “I can’t hear without my subtitles” (but there’s some truth in that, too!).
When I request a queue return time, just to be clear, I am not asking to cut in front of anyone in line. Rather, I am asking to wait the same 75 minutes as everyone else, only with the freedom to wait somewhere other than the cramped, anxiety-induced monotony of the physical queue. Once my 75 minutes has elapsed, just like everyone physically waiting in line, I will then zip through a separate lane and hop on the ride. Like subtitles, no one is inconvenienced by my use of this accessibility service. Queue return times simply allow me to manage my disability and its attendant anxieties without incurring unnecessary psychological stress to experience what we’ve all paid nearly $200 a day for – a magical time to enthusiastically embrace fandom and nostalgia at the parks. I humbly hope Disney reverses course with this morally bankrupt logic and restores their DAS to better accommodate people like me again.
Even if these policies are restored, however, there is much work left to be done to make the parks feel accessible to everyone. Speaking for my own disability, I felt the most obvious work to be done remains in places that are branded as implicitly accessible, like how my partner and I got excited and optimistic about the “virtual queue” we joined to ride Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind.
Our Experience in Cosmic Rewind‘s Virtual Queue
The virtual queue, though it may reduce the excessiveness of lines physically clogging the park, dropped the accessibility ball on many fronts. I can’t expect DAS to perfectly account for everything, but I can expect them to be better.
Around 5:30PM, we received the notification that our “group” in the virtual queue was ready to enter Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind. Excitedly, we hurried over to the ride, ready to conquer the feeling of rejection from Frozen earlier and experience something that was, for us, special. We scanned our virtual queue passes and entered the enormous building housing Cosmic Rewind, and suddenly my heart sank. This virtual queue might prevent a line from wrapping around the building itself, but inside, we were faced with a queue that was still just over an hour long, despite the eight hours we had already waited for this ride.
Part of the nature of theme park rides is never fully seeing the front of the line until the last moment, when suddenly you round the bend and see the next fifty or so people ahead of you, eagerly boarding the ride at last. Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind is a sprawling labyrinth of lines and ramps and walls blocking off your ability to see how many people are still ahead of you. Surely, there’s some logic to this practice, but for someone with my disabilities, this lack of knowledge amplifies my feelings of panic and helplessness, intensifies the lack of emotional control I feel over the situation. I checked the virtual queue ticket, and nothing was specified about the length of the interior line we now physically waited in. I looked around; there were no cast members in sight. We were suddenly as “stuck” as we were at Haunted Mansion, and the only reason we made it is because of the months spent in therapy, planning this trip, and discussing extensive ways of support with my partner. As far as I’m concerned, Disney did nothing to support my experience in this queue, and it could have been a disaster.
As far as accommodations are concerned, one of the best ways Disney’s DAS could better support me and people who share my neurodivergence is to communicate estimated queue length. In the same way that you can see “120 minutes” outside a line before you enter the queue, this information should remain transparent to line participants – whether physically or through the My Disney Experience app – throughout the duration of their experience. One justification for this request is that a key feature of my neurodivergence causes me to deeply struggle with noticing basic bodily signals – feeling hungry or thirsty, noticing that I’m tired, recognizing that I’m upset before I start crying, etc. For me, I can’t tell what I’m feeling until after the fact, and so I could suddenly realize I’m irritable because I’m hungry – but then be faced with a dilemma: leave the line and lose our place, or endure the discomfort that most neurotypical people intuitively manage with ease. Making this information transparent to everyone, independent of disability, would help neurotypical people too, even if it was as simple as offering the option to take a restroom break mid-line.
Finally, after an hour of the unexpected line, and the struggles involved, the final stretch emerged. Frustration was briefly replaced with excitement. All of that time waiting, for a moment, didn’t matter – all we could think about is how my partner was finally getting a chance to ride something she had been unable to before, and how this was the only video game related ride in the park. With her as the Disney adult and me as the video game fanatic, neither one of us were compromising our interests for this ride.
Three minutes later, the ride was over. An entire day of waiting, an hour of physically queuing up, and months of working through therapy – all for three minutes. Admittedly, this brevity is true of all theme park rides, but the disproportionality involved took away from what could have otherwise been an exhilarating experience. As a ride, Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind does something I’ve never experienced on a roller coaster before. Think Space Mountain from Magic Kingdom, but the car you are riding in is omnidirectional. In other words, as you barrel forward, twisting and turning along bends in the track, your car moves independently, spinning you around on a separate axis. It’s truly exhilarating. But worth it? I can’t say yes, even as a massive fan of Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy.
We emerged from the ride, hair blown back to a degree that I haven’t felt since skydiving. My partner and I had just filled the air with choral screams of adrenaline. But just as quickly as the ride had ended, the thrill subsided. The reality described above began sinking in. Though our experience at Epcot was infused with months of emotional management, making this a much better trip overall, I left feeling frustrated and dissatisfied. Like a child, I expected to receive the reward of all my work. Instead, I was met with a long day of alienation from a place that most people describe as “magical.”
Final Thoughts
In writing this article, I returned to the USA Today piece mentioned above. One point of optimism I can offer this conversation about Cosmic Rewind, Disney, and how its revised DAS policies caused me to suffer unnecessary anxiety and stress, is an ongoing petition to restore inclusive eligibility criteria. One line of the petition that resonated with me, in particular, is that “Disney has left out a wide array of disabled individuals, including cancer patients, many people with autism (even though it says this is who DAS is for many are still rejected) veterans with PTSD, Parkinson’s, Multiple Sclerosis, ALS, Guillan-Barre, those with rare diseases and more.” The parenthetical is what gets me. What I experienced is well-documented, yet it takes a petition for Disney to respond.
There are 33,000 signatures on this petition to Disney at the time of this writing. You can sign it here.
As a franchise, I still love Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy – my experience at Epcot did not ruin my love for the excellent video game, at the very least. In fact, though I have only seen the first two Guardians films at the moment of this writing, my partner and I recently watched The Guardians of the Galaxy Holiday Special and loved it. My partner does not play video games much, but she has even agreed to play the game that got me into this franchise (more on that soon, hopefully). When we inevitably boot up Marvel’s Guardians, I will be reminded of our experience with Cosmic Rewind – a now-cautionary tale in my journey to live fully with my disability.
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