Hello, welcome back to the Poetic Diabetic. Diabetes is not fun. The restless mornings spent fixing medical devices, the constant chime of alarms, the exhaustion from both hypo and hyperglycemia; diabetes is just simply not fun no matter what angle you approach it from. However, every once in a while, something special happens which reminds me that the disease isn’t all that bad (and no, this isn’t another silver lining blog; you can read that one here). Most recently, that special something proved to be the very much needed accommodations during my recent theme park vacation!

If you and I share anything in common, we might both be mourning the passing of the scariest month of the year. From the treats to the frights to the epic late nights, there’s nothing quite like October! To put a monumental capstone on this year’s festivities, a group of friends and I finally managed to attend Universal’s Halloween Horror Nights for our first time ever… on November 3rd. Despite it being a rather odd night to attend—mostly due to the post-Halloween haze clouding our moods—we still managed to have a stellar night due to my Attraction Assistance Pass!

The ‘What?’ and the ‘Why?’ of the AAP Pass!

For context, the Attraction Assistance Pass is a unique policy at Universal parks which allows certain disabled park-goers to mostly avoid waiting in extended ride queues to the best of Universal’s ability! The pass specifically takes the form of a foldable red card the user can present to park employees at the front of attractions to either get access to a shorter disability queue or a return time to access said queue, depending on the length of the queue line!

One major problem with many universal queue lines is that they’re often outside in the blistering heat, and regularly involve a lot of walking—a surefire recipe for eventual hypoglycemia!

While Universal is often very accommodating about bringing medically required foods into the lines (such as glucose tablets), this doesn’t apply to every single line (namely the locker-requiring roller coasters which absorb the largest chunk of wait times). Additionally, these same roller coaster queues often force people to separate from their phones for up to hours at a time, something I as a Dexcom-reliant diabetic am unable to really do. Besides, nothing slows down a line quite like a dazed diabetic dashing to devour the ‘delicacies’ of basic low snacks. I can distinctly recall having to rush out of a three-hour line for Hagrid’s to throw a Butterbeer against my plummeting hemoglobin when I’d visited as a brand-new Diabetic in late 2020!

My Personal Experience with the Pass

I had found out about the AAP on very short notice from another diabetic teen I was friends with on a chat platform called “Discord”. I had only visited the parks once before since being diagnosed, long before I’d fully understood the depths to which diabetes affected my daily routine. After a slightly tumultuous application process, led primarily by this incredibly helpful Orlando Informer article, I was graciously able to grab the AAP from the Guest Assistance desk at the parks. From there, my friends and I headed off to wait for our first house of the night.

Now, since this is a blog about my diabetic experience and not my Halloween fixation (as assuredly ‘interesting’ as that’d be), I’ll spare you the gory details and summarize the trip. Our party managed to walk through ten total houses and all available rides, alongside a second walkthrough of almost every single house. In other words, we did a lot.

In essence, I am very thankful to have had my AAP. Diabetes as it is can already be such an expensive and time-consuming illness that accommodations like this can make a world of difference on these kinds of trips. I sincerely hope that by writing this blog, I’ve done my due diligence in making more T1D champions aware of these AAP Passes! Anyways, thank you so much for reading, and I hope to have more blogs out soon! See you next time, from one diabetic to another!