Magi Conia rolled her wheelchair up to the Questing Tree. The two years of her absence was evident; the evil encroaching on the land was palpable. No matter; she was here now, and would use her magic to restore order and defeat the invading Red Dragon.
Namine, Jessica, my aunt, and I visited the Wisconsin Dells. The purpose for this mini-vacation was so Namine could (re)visit MagiQuest, a magic-themed scavenger hunt aided by infrared-powered magic wands.
Namine and I have played MagiQuest before, two years ago on our vacation in Tennessee. As it turns out, there are only two locations left in the world: the one we visited, and this one, located in the Dells. What luck!
When Namine played for the first time in Tennessee, she got to pick a wand and name her character. She picked the name Conia, and a [color] wand. Since Namine uses a wheelchair, we encountered our fair share of accessibility issues at the location in Tennessee. This time around, we encountered all new and different ones.
Unlike in Tennessee, this MagiQuest was not all on a single floor. Instead of being a large, horizontally laid out area, it was vertical, spanning four floors. Complicating matters, the elevator could only be used to access the first two floors. Since many quests — especially the latter ones — required visiting all four floors to find the scavenger hunt items, Namine and I had to figure something out.
There were stairs leading from one floor to another, but there was also another means of travelling between floors: a rope bridge. Ever the fearless adventurer, Namine decided to give it a shot. When crawling across, she found that her shoes got stuck on the rope knots, so she took them off. Her feet didn’t get stuck, but the hardness of the knots did hurt her feet. This was obviously not going to work.
Seldom does the solution to a problem require brute force, but this one did. Since there was no alternative, I carried Namine up or down the stairs (depending on which direction we were going), then went back for her wheelchair. Then Namine would climb back in her chair and we went on with our scavenger hunt. Every time we needed to travel to a floor where the elevator did not go, we repeated the process.
On the third floor, there was an area which could not be accessed by wheelchair. At least, we didn’t want to attempt it — it was fabric mesh, not rope, but then again not too dissimilar to the rope bridges from floor to floor. This, at least, Namine could crawl on without pain or getting stuck.
On all the upper floors, there were slides allowing a quick way to go down. Namine never took these, with the recent memory of breaking her leg on a similar slide being all too clear. “It’s not worth the risk,” she said. I cannot but agree.
Namine had a wonderful time visiting a new but familiar MagiQuest experience. We had to make our own accessibility, but that’s what I’m here for, as long as I can.
Leave a Reply