Disney On Ice: Stranger gives Waikato family free VIP tickets after 'tough month'

A Waikato mother was enjoying a meal at McDonald's with her young daughter and fiancé when she was approached by a "beautiful Māori man" wanting to do a good deed.

Rebekah Tiare Marsters Chesney told Newshub she spotted the man looking around the Hamilton McDonald's on Sunday, but she wasn't sure what for.

"He came up to me and he asked if we had gone to Disney On Ice yet. I said 'we haven't'.

"He asked if we wanted to go because he had some tickets... I thought he meant if we wanted to buy some tickets off him."

The man explained to Chesney that he was visiting Hamilton with his family, who were staying in the hotel next door. The group was supposed to be going to Disney On Ice that night but two of them had come down with food poisoning.

"He said three of his family couldn't make it, but they didn't want the tickets to go to waste."

The man gave the tickets to Chesney, which to her disbelief, he said she could have free of charge.

"I didn't realise until he had left that they were actually VIP tickets. They were the second row," she says.

The family lives in Orini, a 30-minute drive from Hamilton's Claudelands Events Centre, where Disney On Ice was being performed.

"We had to quickly drive home and get ready and then shoot back into town to make it on time for the show."

Chesney says when her family arrived at the venue, the possibility of the tickets being fake popped into mind.

"It was in the back of my mind, that we could get there and they try to scan it and tell us it was fake," she says.

"If he had given me the tickets that you print off I would have been a bit sketchy… Because they were actual Ticketek tickets I believed they were real."

Chesney and her family sat with the mysterious man and his daughter for the duration of the show, but the pair quickly rushed away when it ended.

A screenshot from footage of the Disney On Ice show at Hamilton's Claudelands Events Centre.
Rebekah Tiare Marsters Chesney says her daughter was "so surprised". Photo credit: Supplied

Chesney didn't have a chance to thank him for his generous act, so decided to publicly post on Facebook to try and find the "lovely" man.

"I was so hoping that someone who knew who he was, or one of his family members who came might have seen it," she says.

Chesney said the man's act of selflessness had come at the end of a really "tough month" for the family.

"My daughter has been sick - she's been in and out of the hospital. He reconfirmed there are lovely people out there."

Her three-year-old daughter loved the show and was overwhelmed by all the princesses.

"She was so surprised!"

Chesney says she really wants to thank the kind stranger in person.

"We're really grateful and thankful. It was just a really nice gesture."

Newshub.