In Defense of Disney Adults

There is a person who comes to mind when someone says "Disney adult" in a dismissive way. She is wearing Minnie ears and a matching outfit. She is crying at the castle. She is very, very excited about everything, loudly, in a way that fills the whole room. She exists. We love her. But she is not most of us, and she is not the whole picture.

Most adults who love Disney parks are quieter about it than that. They are not trying to convert anyone. They know it is not for everyone and are genuinely fine with that. They go because they like it. They do not think this requires a defense. They are sometimes surprised to find out other people think it does.

The case against Disney adults, such as it is, usually rests on one idea: that Disney is for children, and adults who treat it as their own interest have misunderstood something. I'd push back on that, and not gently. Walt Disney did not build these parks because he loved children's entertainment. He built them because he kept ending up bored on a bench at amusement parks while his kids ran around, and he wanted somewhere that was genuinely enjoyable for the adults in the family too. That was the founding problem. Adult enjoyment was not an afterthought bolted onto a children's product. It was the original design brief.

Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind is my favorite ride of any theme park I have ever been to, and I have been to a few. What makes it is the way the coaster car rotates independently as it moves, using that rotation to amplify every turn and shift in a way that makes the ride feel like more than it is. It is smooth in a way I have not experienced on any other coaster. It plays a different song each ride. The theming is genuinely great, but strip it away and the engineering still holds. I have family members who are not particularly Disney fans, who have mostly stopped coming to the parks because they ran out of reasons to make the trip. Cosmic Rewind is now a reason. Not because they love Guardians of the Galaxy. Because the ride itself earned it.

There is a bar at EPCOT called Geo-82. You have to be 21 or older to enter. Not 21 or older to drink, 21 or older to get through the door. Children are not permitted, full stop. Oga's Cantina in Galaxy's Edge is a Star Wars-themed bar where most of the menu is alcoholic cocktails, with a few mocktails and snacks, but you are not going there for your kids. You are going there because you want to go there. The entire EPCOT tradition of drinking around the World Showcase, the festival food booths, the fine dining restaurants where the prices alone tend to filter out families with young children: none of this is accidental. The parks were designed to have places like this in them.

I will also say, because it is true, that I have spent real time at Disney doing things that were very much made for children, and I have no regrets and genuinely enjoyed it. During my Disney College Program, at 19, a coworker and I completed the Wilderness Explorer badge book at Animal Kingdom. All of it, across multiple days. One of the stations covered shade-grown coffee: how growing coffee under a tree canopy instead of clearing land for sun exposure protects bird habitat by preventing deforestation. I found that genuinely interesting.

A child doing the activity does not drink coffee and is not buying coffee beans, so the point is somewhat lost on them. I also did not know the Maharajah Jungle Trek existed until the badge trail took me there, and now I stop there every time I'm in the park. There were tigers. I had no idea. I still have the Senior Wilderness Explorer completion sticker, and I'm proud of it.

The point is that there is something in these parks for everyone. For you. For me. For my grandma. For your baby niece. For the neighbor down the block who insists he's not a Disney person. The cringe discourse imagines that adults at Disney have wandered into the wrong place. The parks were built so that you are exactly where you are supposed to be.