Reading about this has jarred my memory of something that happened while hubby and I were staying at DLR a few years back. It was a very interesting look at Disney Security in action and left us both impressed and with a huge amount of respect for how they do their jobs.
One morning we were walking through DD on the way to the parks (from the
Disneyland Hotel). DD was EMPTY because it was early morning, mid-week. We'd just picked up coffee, and were still clearing out the cobwebs.
There was only one other person, a man, walking ahead of us, and we were commenting on how empty it was at DD. As we kept walking, we noticed some unusual activity in the "wings" (i.e., in the corners behind some of the stores and near the DD entrance to GC hotel). We quickly realized there was literally an entire "SWAT" team of Disney security, watching the man in front of us.
Most of these security guys were wearing all-dark outfits, and were watching the man from the shadows/sidelines.
We realized that the man in front of us was dressed (somewhat) like a homeless man, or at least strangely. We didn't even notice at first that he seemed a bit out of place in squeaky clean DD, because it's common to see eccentric types walking thru downtown in San Diego, where we're from.
We wondered why a team of security was following and tracking this homeless man (with walkie-talkies and everything!). We were joking to each other about Disney bringing out the full SWAT team to rid the property of its 'undesirables' before the guests woke up and saw something out of place.
I think, because we were still foggy-brained, it didn't even occurr to us that the man might be dangerous. As we got closer to him, we saw that he had a long, flowing beard, and what looked like dreadlocks piled up under (and sticking out of) a large hat. He was wearing a green Army jacket and dark, saggy clothes.
For an older, perhaps homeless man, he was certainly fit or at least excited, because he was walking at a very fast clip.
I STILL don't know why we were not worried. Instead we picked up the pace, because we wanted to see what was going to happen!
At this point, we were near the World of
Disney store, walking towards the security checkpoint.
Suddenly, from the left side (near the tram drop-off) we saw a friendly, grandpa-type security guard in full Disney blues. He ambled up to the mysterious man with a big grin on his face. The older security guard was acting more like a
WalMart greeter than a member of the tense security team waiting in the wings. At this point, we were in front of the bakery right near the security checkpoint.
He strolled towards the man and said "Good morning," to him and the man jumped a bit. He asked the man a question or two, and complimented him on his hat, and (I swear) I heard him say "Nice weather we're having!" and then he strolled away.
At this point, the man was obviously spooked and he turned right towards us and scrambled past. We got a good close-up look at his face. He was clearly a young, scrawny clean-cut kid wearing some kind of weird "homeless guy" or "potential terrorist" disguise of his own making.
The long flowing beard was fake. The hair, also fake. He barely fit into the baggy clothes. You could see from his eyes that he was terrified, and that he had lost his nerve for whatever he was about to try.
He was getting out of there as quick as he could speed-walk.
What the hell? We decided he was probably a college kid doing some kind of social experiment on how Disney would handle "a situation" on its property. Either it was an experiment for a class, or else he was pulling some kind of a prank on his own.
But as soon as the kind old man security guard approached him, it was enough to spook him into turning and leaving. And the security guard was able to tell - in mere seconds - that the boy was not a threat, but a prankster instead. The kid never saw the entire security team following him through DD - he only saw the friendly security guard who said 'hello' to him.
But we were provided with a front row seat to the entire experience. It was wild. We didn't stop talking about it for the rest of the day! That friendly grandpa-type security guard was obviously a pro, and probably a profiler.
The whole thing was pretty impressive.
On second thought maybe they thought me my DM and 2 DS's were a security threat and they wanted to check us more.
Because I can SO see this happening to me one day....
