The Beach Boys Break Disney!

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Currently going at Epcot at Walt Disney World is the annual Food & Wine Festival. As part of the festival, Disney hosts a concert series called Eat to the Beat. The concerts are held in a small outdoor amphitheater in the American Adventure Pavilion in the World Showcase in the back of Epcot. Most bands scheduled to play are older bands, such as from the 70s, 80s and 90s. This year, a notable band stood out on the lineup, scheduled to play six sets on November 15-16: The iconic Beach Boys. The Beach Boys have been around since 1961, meaning they have been active for 64 years! While their best years as a band are long behind them, they continue to tour and continue to draw decent crowds. However, if you recall, earlier this year lead singer and founding member Brian Wilson passed away. I remember saying at the time that because of that, The Beach Boys concert at Epcot would be absolutely crazy as fans tried to attend one last concert. And I wasn't wrong about that. But what made it worse was that actor John Stamos, who famously played Uncle Jesse on the long-running hit tv series Full House (and a huge Beach Boys fan), announced that he would be joining The Beach Boys for their two dates at Epcot to play with them. Stamos plays guitar, and even performed with the band in an iconic episode of Full House back in the 80s.. Disney was not prepared for the onslaught of guests/attendees for the two shows. On both days Epcot reached maximum capacity early in the day and guests had to be turned away. Not from just the concert, mind you, but the theme park itself. The people congestion was so bad that everything came to a standstill. Guests could not move an inch, or get from one side of the park to the other. Photos of the chaos flooded the internet, and it was all over the news. The Beach Boys were trending on all social media sites. It was absolutely crazy. Disney tried their best to manage the situation, but did not have the resources available (or couldn't get them there in time) to address the situation. In the midst of the chaos, there was the potential for a lot of bad things to happen, but fortunately for Disney all 7 billion people inside Epcot (okay, a little exaggeration) were chill and behaved themselves appropriately. My family and I were lucky enough to have gotten into the theme park early on November 15, and we had dining reservations with concert seating that guaranteed us a seat in the small amphitheater, so everything worked out well for us. We just rolled with the punches and went with the flow. One things we have learned over the years from the crowds at Disney is patience. The them park closed at 9:00pm, but we weren't able to even leave our seats at the amphitheater until just after 11:00pm--3 hours after the concert ended--due to the chaos of the crowds. I think we finally got back to our hotel on property at a little after midnight. The Beach Boys literally broke Disney! I have a feeling that Disney officials will be reviewing and rewriting their policies and procures and criteria for inviting bands after this one! In case you are wondering how many people can fit in Epcot, it has a capacity of 110,000 people. That's a pretty big theme park! It's also unheard of for Epcot to hit maximum capacity, but it happened two days in a row this past weekend.