Customs are stupid
I went to Paris a couple of years ago with a weirdo from my French class (this was the point of the trip). We spent four days wandering around the city speaking French to people and so on, and on the last day we were waiting in the departure lounge for the flight in front of us to leave. It was the middle of summer and so there were about 500 screaming kids running around waving the stuff they'd got from Disneyland in the air. They were still coming through security when the line stopped.
One of the kids had bought an obviously plastic, obviously totally harmless lightsaber from Disneyland and about five security people were looking at it and debating whether to let it go or not. Of course the kid wasn't too happy about this and was screaming his head off. Meanwhile the kid's mother was trying to calm him down, and announced loud enough for the whole lounge to hear in the broadest Welsh accent ever (trust me, my family are as Welsh as they come) that "your father's having kittens!".
Long story short, after delaying our flight for half an hour with their dithering and making us lose our runway slot, security confiscated the lightsaber. The obviously harmless plastic lightsaber. Now I know this was in 2003 after security had tightened up, but I don't think anyone could do any damage to anything with a cheap souvenir.
( Maladicta, Sat 4 Mar 2006, 14:53, Reply)