How to Speed Up Elevators and Other Hotel Tricks

Necessity breeds innovation-at least it did on a hotel stay a couple years ago. We were staying at one of those highrise hotels in Chicago. One of those hotels with 50 or so floors and only a few elevators.

Being unfortunate as we were, our stay coincided with a massive convention at said hotel. Every floor was packed, and the elevators were traffic jam central. Every time you tried to get on an elevator, you had to wait for an eternity, and when the elevator finally arrived, there were two dozen people already crushed against each other inside the elevator car. It could take fifteen minutes just to get upstairs.

Now in those desperate straights, we figured out something interesting: if you held down the "Door close" button in that elevator, it wouldn't stop at every floor. No, your elevator would become an express car, going straight to your destination without any detours or stops in between.

Inconsiderate to other hotel guests who might need to get on the elevator? Well, yes. Necessary when there are already twenty people in your elevator car, and more people try to get on at every floor? Yes, indeed.

After this discovery, I did some research at other hotels and found out that this manual override function is not universal. Some elevators won't stop if you hold down the "Door close" button, while others still will. However, it seems that the taller buildings tend to have this function built into their elevators.

Another trick I discovered was regarding hotel rooms that require you to insert your key card into a slot on the wall to turn on the electricity in the room. This is energy saving and all and good-except if you need to leave the room, and it's very hot outside your hotel room. In that case, you have to take your key card with you, disabling the air conditioning in your room, and when you return, the room will be sweltering.

One way around this is to insert any other similarly shaped card into the key slot. It could be a bookstore gift card, a business card, or anything else oblong and of that approximate size. This way, you can keep air on in your room while your are away.

Once again, not necessarily what the hotel would want you to do. But in some situations, you've got to do what you've got to do.