UO ride op responds thoughtfully to autism meltdown

This isn't really news in the traditional sense, but it's a really good story, because I've been in this situation.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/state/florida/article231346018.html

Kind of annoyed that the author thought it was appropriate to put "autistic meltdown" in quotes as if to question of it's a thing. Trust me, it's a thing.

Is it possible the author was quoting the mother, since he also put "awesomely autistic" in quotes in the same sentence, and that seemed to have come from the mother?

I doubt it. There are all kinds of grammatical errors in there. People don't know how to write.

Grammar aside, this is something I'd expect to see in /r/uplifting. I'm so impressed that Universal trains their employees so thoroughly to be able to deal with an issue like this. What the ride op did would be above and beyond my expectations if I was the parent (at least I think it would be, I guess I don't really have a frame of reference for this sort of thing). Kudos to them! Their reward is the public's goodwill.

The mother's facebook post had "autistic meltdown" in quotes. Makes sense to me that the reporter put it in quotes then also.

Also, Orange County Sheriff cars have "making a difference" in quotes on their cars. In the Comic Sans font.

As someone who has worked in attractions at both WDW and UO, the "training" is simply "if there's a problem guest, you can comp x amount of dollars (or at WDW) and give free Fastpasses to make the situation right"

What this woman did wasn't her Universal training, it was just her being a good person and likely having some kind of prior experience and knowledge with the type of situation. Which to me is even more of a reason to applaud her. If she was able to do it without getting a "why weren't you standing in your designated spot" or "employees can't sit down on the clock" from a low level manager on an ego trip trying to micromanage and give her s**t about it, that is when it's time to applaud UO for allowing attractions staff to use common sense and be human.

Being high functioning autistic, I am touched by this story (grammar aside*). Kudeos to the family for being accepting and loving of him. And kudos to Universal for having such wonderful team members.

*I spent too many years designing and writing ACE's event flyers, blessed with an all star proofing team, to be able to ignore errors in something intended for publication.