Warning: Snow Globes can be potentially dangerous to your trip

My wife just informed me that my sister-in-law and her son, my nephew, just got back from a fabulous trip to Disneyland.  Unfortunately, the trip home was a bit dramatic.

My nephew apparently had fireworks in his backpack (his carry-on) that were leftover from the 4th of July.  One of those firecrackers was in the shape of a grenade.  For some reason, he was prompted to look in his backpack and suddenly realized they were there when they got into LAX.  This, obviously, scared my sister-in-law a bit, and she knew it wouldn't be wise to just dump them in the trash (I could see the terror alert going to RED if those were found in one of the trash bins).  So, she went and reported it to the ticketing agent, who in turn, told them to go to the sky cap (I have no idea why they sky cap).

The sky cap proceeded to read my nephew the riot act and scared him into tears.  He is not one to get into this kind of trouble, but he was being told that he should be turned over to the TSA where they'd most likely arrest him as a potential terrorist and his parents will go to jail and he may never see his family again.  I guess they need to do this because a kid who would do this most likely was a no-good-punk.

After going through all that, they attempt to go through security and my nephew's backpack gets flagged again for extra scrutiny.

This time, the TSA agent starts yelling at him and his mom about not adhering to the liquids policy.  My sister in law was all, "What do you mean, I checked all our liquids".  Then the TSA pulled out their collection of snow globes they bought at Disney and said, "What do you think this is!".  They were then told that snow globes are contraband on planes and that she had the right mind to confiscate them.  Fortunately, they were the small ones and fit into 2 quart bags so they were able to take them on the plane. 

Now, I am a rather seasoned traveler and would've never, ever thought that a snow globe would've been flagged as a contraband liquid item.  Go figure. 

I could go on about my feelings about how we over reacted with the liquids ban, but this is a Disney blog

Edited to Add:

Apparently, according to this TSA website, Snow globes are banned from carry-on luggage no matter what, as well as, gel shoe inserts

TSA:  Permitted and Prohibited Items

Technorati Tags: Grump's Opinion