Lock Up-Random Show News Part VI

By today, my husband and I were so tired we couldn’t help but sleep in a little. We ate breakfast downstairs at the Café and made it to the show by about 11:30ish.

We headed up stairs next to the Italian Pavilion where we looked for one of my Hong Kong vendors. Should’ve looked at my pocket planner (by the way I love these little pocket planners) before we walked up here because my vendor was now downstairs in the basement with all the other Hong Kong vendors. I think this year’s show has fewer vendors because last year many of our Hong Kong vendors were upstairs because of an overflow in the basement/World’s Fair area—at least I’m guessing that’s why they were not upstairs in the hotel area. As soon as I finally realized where they were we headed to the escalator—down we went, alarms blaring, and doors to the right, left, up, and down locked. We were trapped with about 30-40 people and a security guard who knew nothing. I couldn’t believe how all the doors could go down in just a blink of an eye. What were to happen if there were a fire? We would be trapped—most were uttering these words? 15 or 20 minutes went by—while we were just standing there. Finally, guards took us through a service walkway/entrance which took us to one of the sections of the AGTA show which was also locked off from the rest of the show. In the AGTA ballroom we got coffee and had to sit there for a while before a door was open allowing us to go from the AGTA ballroom to the other ballrooms. If you were in the basement of the Sands Expo or upstairs in the Prestige Promenade you probably wouldn’t know what was going on in the hotel—we did because we were stuck with a group of people whom were panicking. After asking a couple of guards all we were told was that either someone tripped the alarm or something had really happened but it would take them awhile to find out where the alarm originated.

Hours after the chaos we made it to the World’s Fair.