It could have easily been in a Seinfeld episode.

Our hotel was about a mile from Disneyland, and it was our last night at Disney. My wife and 3 kiddos (at the time, around ages between 4-7 or so), wanted to watch fireworks from our hotel rooftop, so we left the park with enough time to get back for the fireworks show.

However, one of my kids wanted a particular souvenir item that they were sold out of at the park, so me (being the heroic father) told them I'd go to Downtown Disney to get it from the big store there and meet them back at the hotel (basically, I would just run back about a mile or so in time for the fireworks).

It all went according to plan, and I ran back to the hotel almost just in time for fireworks. Of course, I was sweating profusely as I entered the hotel with a stupid toy in my hands.

I went into the elevator first (all drenched in sweat) and then about 15 other people followed behind me, so I was in the very back corner of a relatively small elevator. It was apparently way overloaded and got stuck immediately. It went nowhere.

I tried to get my phone out to call/text my wife that I was stuck in the elevator, but of course there was no cell service.

Now it starts to get really hot in the elevator, so I'm sweating even more now (but now I'm not alone).

Right beside me is an old, rather overweight gentleman with his adult daughter. He apparently had just eaten a hamburger who kept belching up (and I could smell it) and he said at one point to his daughter: "I shouldn't have had the onions."

Naturally, our spokesman at the front of the elevator is a well-meaning Asian man with a very thick accent, so communication with the outside world was...not easy. At one point, after almost an hour, he started yelling and banging on the door screaming half-intelligibly in a thick accent: "Get us out of here. It's really hot in here." I'm not sure if the staff on the outside could even understand anything.

I'm just laughing at these circumstances.

The real problem was that there was an older lady with diabetes who was struggling, and at one point had to sit down.

Finally, after over an hour getting cooked inside this elevator, someone from Otis was able to open the door.

By that time, the fireworks were over, my wife had already gotten the kids to bed, and she was freaked out because I wasn't responding to texts and she had no idea what had happened to me over the previous 2 hours.

I still laugh thinking about this story sometimes.