Universal with Autism

[disneynewman]

So we are looking into taking our first family trip ti Universal next month. We have been going to WDW for years and always get the GAC for our son who has Autism, and have always been very happy with how Disney handles our situation. can anyone tell of their recent experiences at Universal and the use of their equivalent to Disney's GAC?

TIA!

 

[3Leafs]

My son is autistic and I came across lady that also has an autistic son. she has a website called autismattheparks.com she has every Park in Florida listed with everything you ever wanted to know about their special needs passes.

 

[Tinkerpeas hubby]

Hi we have a son with Autism, we actually found Universal
To be Amazing and suited out sons needs very well,
It does work different though, you get a card and when you go up to the ride CM you show them the card if the ride wait is under 20 min you go straight through the front of line que! If its over that time they stamp the card and write a time for you to come back to go through the FOL que! This works really well as it means your wiring for only 5/10 mins a ride " very valuable for WWHP ride section.
Only the main headline rides have the FOL if you go to a ride the does not have it you just go straight to the exit and wait they then let you on from that point instead,

 

[kylmac]

We like staying onsite at the Universal hotels so you get to bypass the lines-sadly with our son the pass they used a few years ago gave us a time to come back and my son had meltdowns due to the fact that we were there at the ride but had to wait-if you can swing it try on of the 3 onsite hotels so you can show your room key card and go right in with very little wait time. Good luck!
Elizabeth

 

[Tinkerpeas hubby]

We like staying onsite at the Universal hotels so you get to bypass the lines-sadly with our son the pass they used a few years ago gave us a time to come back and my son had meltdowns due to the fact that we were there at the ride but had to wait-if you can swing it try on of the 3 onsite hotels so you can show your room key card and go right in with very little wait time. Good luck!
Elizabeth

This is the exact reason why I explained how the pass works as it still does work the way you said, and can be a real shock for the child..

we already knew it worked this way before taking our son and because we knew that we could have "Huge meltdowns" with it working this way (even more so as we was doing 3wks at Disney world before doing universal.) we did a story board explaining how universal worked and how it was different from Disney, this helped a lot and could be the reason why we found universal to work so well for us, we gave our son a watch with an alarm on it we have also used a stop watch, if we went up to the ride where the wait was over 20mins we then put the time we could ride onto the stop watch and went and did something else once the stop watch/ alarm went off he would get all excited knowing it was time to ride.If you don't think this would work for your child...
Another way if doing it is to get another person to go and ask the wait time & get the card stamped with the time to come back that way when it's your turn you can take the child straight to the ride and go right on! Some ride attendants have asked where the child is and so if the child is in sight but other wise being kept amused we just point out and get the person with the child to wave, or if the child is somewhere else i.e bathroom/shops /quite place we explain why the child is not there and why we need to do it this way,
they have always been very good about it as the only time the child has to be present is when actually going through the FOL Que. we find these ways to work pretty well for people who can't afford universals hotel prices.

So maybe this would work for you?