On another thread about BLT it was brought to my attention that BLT might be a problem for us on our upcoming trip. DH can't go in elevators. I thought it might only be an issue if we wanted to go to the lounge. Now I'm hearing that there are no stairs available on the 1st floor to access the upper floors of the building. Is this true? On all our trips this has never been a problem because there is always a staircase accessible for DH to use. He doesn't care about how many flights he has to walk up. We have a lake view room booked & am I correct that those are all on higher floors? How the heck is he going to get to our room? Am I going to have to switch to a different resort?
I don't know if they keep the stairs locked from the outside, but we found them locked from the inside one afternoon. We had a great 2 bedroom on the 14th floor that was right by the stairs. My boys decided to take the stairs down to the pool one afternoon, and DH and I took the elevator. My boys walked down all 14 flights of stairs, only to find the door to the outside locked! The had to go back up and take the elevator anyway. On another note, we reserved a lakeview studio for some family that was joining us at BLT, and they were only on the 4th floor. Not all lakeview villas are on the higher floors.
Hmmm, I would think that there would have to be an open staircase - in case of a fire people are supposed to take the stairs, not elevators. Sounds like a fire hazard to have the doors locked!
Being locked from the outside would be a violation of fires codes I believe and should have been reported. That's why stairs are there. Sorry OP, can't help with your question since BLT is the one resort I haven't used stairs.
I think, but I'm not ultra-positive, that you can enter the stairwells from the first floor. I am positive that once you are in a stairwell you can enter and exit on all floors except perhaps the 16th floor where the Top of the World Lounge is located. Remember that you can enter and exit BLT via the skybridge from the Contemporary Resort. You ride escalators to get from the first floor of the Contemporary the skybridge - no elevators required. Once you cross over to BLT, you'll be on BLT's 5th floor. I know you can then access the stairwells to get to any floor at BLT (with the possible exception of the 16th floor). There are several Lake View villas on the 3rd, 4th, and 5th floors. Since a lot of guests request a high floor, perhaps it will be easy for you to request as low a floor as possible. Perhaps the 5th floor would be best because then you'll only need to use the skybridge to access your villa. Good luck!
That's kind of scary! What would be do in the event of a fire?! Yikes... I hope there's open stairs when we are there in June!
In my office building (17 floors), the door at the bottom of the stairs is alarmed. There's a sign saying you will be fined if you try to exit during a non-emergency. So maybe when they said they were "locked", they were actually alarmed.
Many office buildings for security reasons have exit to stairwells only. Once in the stairwell you would have to exit the ground floor, you would not be able to enter another floor from the stairwell. It is very possible that some hotels are this way too. If elevators are a concern, I would never book BLT.
The Life Safety Code usually requires that every other floor have reentry from the stairwell. But the Life Safety Code isn't mandatory. Doors can be locked to keep people from entering the building, but not from leaving the building.
All of the doors to reenter the floors in my building are locked for security reasons (mulitple tenants). But I believe if the fire alarm goes off, they unlock.
I used the stairs a few times when we were there in February (for exercise) and never noticed a stairway door locked on the inside of the building. Besides the stairs in the middle of the building, there are stairwells at each end of the "C" - actually a cool design. There are great views from there. Here's a picture of the pool from the stairwell so you can get an idea of where where these stairs are; you can see the line of windows of the stairwell on the other end of the building in this pic as well.
