Alternate email stopped being recognized and requests to reset password locked

I made an appointment for genius bar last night to fix a phone that i have had sitting for a good year that is cracked. As soon as I tried to login it started asking for my apple password that i have used daily for 3 years to be reset. it did it 2 times and finally it let me schedule the appointment. Upon arriving to the store, they needed me to login to iCloud to turn off find my iPhone and it again started with password reset requests. Once logged in, it states no find my devices for this account even though you can see them on my non broken phone I use daily. It then asked me to verify myself by using the passcode to my phone I am using, it refused to take my passcode even though I just used it to get into my phone? Now am completely disabled and locked out of everything cloud subscription store based.

they said try using the password for the email address for your Apple ID. I said that user id is nothing more than a user id. I don’t have that email address anymore (like 8 years now) and I set an alternate email login that I have used for 8 years until today.

everything was fine until I was asked to login to the Apple site to schedule the appointment. At that point everything has basically stopped functioning.

I have year of photos movies and purchases I can now no longer access and all of my backups. It also wanted me to setup 2 factor and asked to setup security questions. I alreaady have had all of that setup for ages.

something glitched hard on apples end and the store basically was like sorry can’t fix the other phone and can’t help you on why Apple now spits you out like you never existed.

at a loss, no way to get support for this I guess, just thousands of $ in purchases gone forever and years of my kids childhood in photos and videos gone forever. Hopefully they stop billing my Apple Card for the storage at least