My name is Denise Lodge and I live in the Tampa Fl area. Yesterday, the 22nd. Of Nov. I took my 2 daughters, my grandson and his friend to universal studios, orlando to celebrate my Grandsons 17th birthday. The day went well, until there was an incident while the two boys and the aunt waited in line for the hulk ride. The park is not at fault for this incident, in fact at this moment we thought that the staff handled it extremely well.
The incident was as follows:
The boys were humming a song which seemed to aggravate a man (very large, very drunk, about 50 yrs old) and his wife. The man became aggressive with my grandson, Will, and threatened him. Will's aunt informed the man that he was threatening a minor. The man put his fist up to my daughter, Amy's face (29 yrs old), my grandson stepped between them and the man head butted him.
The staff all rallied round (about 5 of them and detained the man. My family were taken away from the situation and were questioned by the supervisor Trevor, as to how they want to proceed. My daughter insisted on pressing charges. The staff hustled my family onto the ride, while they questioned the suspect, and then they were taken into a room to write out a statement. At this time my family was told that there were many witness's, both staff and visitors, who where backing up the story as was told by both Amy and Will.
One of the staff then told Amy that the wife had said that her husband was not going to jail for this crap (not the word she used) and he took off running with the staff following and reporting to security throughout the chase. They caught up to them in Toon town. My family were then told to go to guest service to finishes with the filing of the charges. At this point we are totally happy with the handling of the situation.
My other daughter, Maria (Will's Mother) and I meet up with the others outside the hulk and proceeded to guest services, and this is where a traumatic assault on my grandson became a verbal and embarrassing intimidation on us all.
On entering guest services I explained why we we were there, specifically to press charges, and a man (i'm very sorry for not getting his name) said he knew nothing about it, was very rude, picked up the phone and said abruptly that he could get someone to look into it, but it would take a while and we would have to wait. I told him we would wait, and as we had not picked up our photo, next door, we would do that while we waited. All of the staff, maybe 4 or 5 people, heard us say this. We came back in 5 mins. And asked how much longer, and the man said harshly "well you walked away, so i cancelled it." I reiterated that we were pressing charges. Some time later a man named Jason, (who would not give us his last name) the head of security, came and told us that no calls had been to security, and he knew nothing. We suggested that he speak to Trevor, the supervisor that had handled the situation at the hulk, get the statements and maybe review the security tapes. Jason REFUSED to do any of these things and his only statement was. "we cannot confirm nor deny the existence of security tapes" I was astounded at his attitude. I asked why he would not go to get the statement from Trevor and he again refused. I asked if he wanted me to get the statement at which point he apparently felt threatened by grandma and called security to stand outside guest services, to keep an eye on me! I had to again ask that we proceed with charges and he said the only way to do that was to call the police and I asked why that had not already been done.in the meantime, my grandsons friend went back to see Trevor who verbally confirmed all that we had originally said.
The police eventually arrived and Jason refused to get Trevor and the statements, again saying that they did not exist. The policeman asked me what I wanted to do as they did not seem to have the suspect, so I asked that he speak with Trevor.
The conclusion of this mess is that security had escorted the offender out of the park, Trevor did have the statements., and had called security, and JASON DENIED EVERYTHING to cover up that security had bungled the whole situation and had escorted the man out of the park even though we had all been quite specific about pressing charges.
I want to commend Trevor and his staff at the hulk and also Rocky at guest services who was kind and understanding and immediately stepped up when he saw how we were being treated. We were given passes to come back to the park, but i don't think the security that you have in place would ever make me feel comfortable.
I would very much appreciate a response, though judging by my experience so far, I am not really expecting that I will get one. I will however forward this email to the Better Business Bureau should I not hear that something is being done about security. This could have been much worse, and I would like to think that threatening situations to anybody will be handled better in the future. Sincerely, Denise Lodge
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