ESXi shell works after being disabled

Hi All,

I have an esxi 5.5 in my home lab and esxi shell was disabled on it. I tried alt + f1 but it will not give me the login prompt. (this is a known behavior)

I enabled esxi shell and it gave me a prompt to enter username and password. I entered the credentials and then I was able to access the shell locally from the esxi server. Now the question is once I have disabled the esxi shell -- if I hit alt + f1 then also it lets work on it.

I am unable to understand if the esxi shell is disabled (previously it was enabled) then why it will let me work on the DCUI console? any suggestions

Thanks

Vaibhav