Special Edition: My Midnight Elevator Ride to the Top of the Empire State Building

How to hack the Empire State Building’s notoriously long lines and hour-long waits?

Visit at midnight.

Fortunately, working late-night shifts in Midtown Manhattan is conducive to a post-work pop-in.

The Empire State Building has 102 floors, and the open-air observation deck is on the 86th floor. There’s also an enclosed observation deck on the 102nd floor, but it costs extra and isn’t that much higher up.

I felt like a combination of Peyton Manning being led to his private room at St. Elmo and a rider skipping a line at Disney World with a Fastpass as I breezed through the waiting rooms. I sped through a maze of metal barriers that are full during the day but deserted at night (the Empire State Building is open until 2 a.m. each day, and the last elevator goes up at 1:15 a.m.).

All the Empire State Building employees wear red pants and blazers and black conductor hats (and link arms with you to escort you off the elevator down — so fancy!). Everyone I met seemed to be really into it and to love their job, so it appears to be a fun place to work (or all of them are just great actors).

The actual elevator ride to the top is both smooth and fast — we’d reached the 45th floor before I realized the car was even moving! You get an ear pop on both the way up and down.

While I haven’t been up to a New York observation deck during the day, I think I actually prefer the night view. You get to see all the gorgeous city lights (lots of rainbow configurations right now for Pride month) and can pick out prominent landmarks easily when everything is lit up. There are also free binoculars stationed around the deck, and the person who used my station before me had evidently trained the viewer right on the Statue of Liberty!

It’s peaceful to look out over the gleaming, buzzing city at night from above. The streets are full of cabs, boats cruise the rivers, and the deck isn’t crowded with wall-to-wall people.

There’s also a gallery at the end of the experience showcasing famous people who’ve visited. What do you think are the chances I used J.K. Rowling’s viewer?