On the evening of November 22, I walked from our hotel (Beach Club) to the international gateway of Epcot and got in the guest services line because I needed to replace my
DAS card which had gotten misplaced when transferring to BC.
There were a few people ahead of me in line, and being the guest services line this meant waiting for a while. Near the wicket, but off to the side were two what looked like older teenage girls, obviously waiting for someone. Unfortunately, I soon found out who.
Suddenly there was this loud yelling from an adult male -- starting way off past the boats where you could hear him but not clearly see him. He yells the whole time he approaches Guest services. His yelling is mostly about him wanting "his tickets" and demanding to speak to a supervisor.
When he gets to near guest services he is met by what we soon learn are his two daughters (they were the apparent teens who had been waiting), a guest services CM, and at least one of the security people from the bag check area (my view of who all in terms of CMs came was partially blocked by the GS booth). He continues screaming about wanting his tickets and demanding to see a supervisor. Added to that is "you don't know who I am" and changing variations on how long they have been a DVC member (so, was that 10, 15, or 27 years ? because he claimed all of them...) and how they come to the parks at least twice a year, etc etc. Oh, and how he had been at dinner somewhere else and had to interrupt that to come and deal with this.
His wife then shows up behind him and tries to get him to calm down, unsuccessfully. Meanwhile, the CMs are all also trying to get him to calm down. The wife goes with the daughters and goes to the GS wicket and speaks with a GS CM trying to actually resolve the issue.
Apparently the issue related to both girls using partially used tickets, one girl was allowed in, but the other girl's ticket was seized. The father claimed they had many partially used tickets (he variously claimed he had 10 or 15 in his wallet right then he could show them) and that sometimes they forget to bring them so buy more tickets, the cost not being a problem. He said they had never had a problem using them sbefore and how dare Disney accuse him of stealing tickets (the daughters tried repeatedly to tell him nobody accused them of that, but he kept on repeating that along with his litany of other yelling).
I finally got up to the wicket and got to deal with my issue and then left, so I have no idea how long he went on screaming. But it was many many minutes while I witnessed it.
I was impressed with the solid line that the CMs made -- he was NOT going to be getting past him. Also, other CMs had come out of the woodwork as it were and were in the area but at a distance, though presumably ready to intervene if needed. The boats appeared to have been stopped, and there were four boat crew standing just outside the boat line area, watching. Yep, he would not be getting on the boats, either...
The CMs who dealt directly with him were calm, professional, and never once did I hear a raised voice from them.
I did watch one of the uniformed security calling in a description of the guy over his radio, not sure if they were contacting the police or not and I was so upset by the yelling that I was crying and I just wanted to get out of there, so did not wait around to see what would happen.
I was glad with the time of night there were not very many kids around to have to witness him. It was disturbing and distressing enough as an adult to be present during the altercation.
-SW