The Denver RMAF 2013 hi-fi show is next week: Part II

Stairways.

Stairways are often the quick way to get around at shows [the Flamingo / THE Show at CES being an exception].

Yeah, you will most likely arrive breathing heavily and with leaden legs when ascending floors – but this can often be more pleasant than shifting from leg to leg staring at the psychedelic carpet waiting for elevators for longer than around 5 minutes [YMMV if you have more or less patience than I. Neli almost always prefers the stairs – seizing an opportunity to burn off more calories and get more fit. Ugh. :-)]

I looked for a good map of the Marriott 1st floor layout – to no avail [though I did find out that the Great American Beer Festival is happening at the same time as RMAF this year in Denver].

So… until I find such a map: we will just have to muddle along.

The low-hanging fruit is to always take one of the two stairways when journeying between the 8th, 9th, 10th and 11th floors in the Tower area of the show and the 4th and 5th floors in the Atrium part of the show.

Now for the not-so low hanging fruit. 🙂

One can traverse the stairways between the 2nd and 8th floors. It is somewhat easier going down than up.

And one of those stairways ends up down on the ground floor taking you OUTSIDE, to the right of the main entrance and to the left of the North side entrance. This door is usually open, and people who grow impatient waiting for the main Tower elevators to return from their sojourn to Tibet could, if they would be so bold, to go out the exterior doors to the left of the elevator bank, hang a right, walk about 40 feet and through a metal exterior door and take the stairs up to 2nd, or, for the not faint of heart, the 8th.

The stairways for the Atrium side of the show also go down to the ground floor – but exterior doors are typically locked [a change they made 3 or 5 years ago]. This means that you really can’t use these stairs to go up from the ground floor to the 4th or 5th floors.

And when descending the Atrium stairs down to the ground floor, you will either find yourself outside in a hurry [and, BTW, it does rain and snow in Denver. You will need something to protect your camera and / or self] or you will find yourself in an airlock next to Audio Limits’ room and have to frantically wave at people through the locked glass doors to get them to let you back into the building [have done this many times. However, it really works much better during show hours when there are people around. Otherwise you have to exit through the exterior door and take a long walk around the hotel back to the main front entrance].

Well, those are my tips and tricks.

Perhaps somebody has some others they might want to share.

Oh, and there are also the freight elevators, which break a lot less frequently than the guest elevators for some reason – but we do not use them when we are, you know, gearless – otherwise it seems kind of rude to those that are, you know, gearfull.