At Empire State Building, take your patience with you

NEW YORK — "I'll meet you at the top of the Empire State Building."

How many whimsical travelers have made those plans? From "An Affair to Remember" to "Sleepless in Seattle," the famous observation deck is an iconic meeting spot.

There's only one catch to this spontaneous decision.

These days, it takes between 30 minutes and three hours to get to the top.

Is it still worth it? You be the judge.

Most tourists, seeing no crowds at the Fifth Avenue entrance, pay no attention to the sign warning of the wait. Why should they? They don't see a line.

It's a masterpiece of crowd management.

Walk through the famous lobby and turn right. Join a line of about 20 people. Wait. Move forward around the corner to another line. Wait. Go down an escalator. Wait. Join another line. Wait. Inch toward security checkpoints. Wait. Get through. Wait.

Just when it seems you are near the ticket window, you join a long line of at least 100 people that snakes around a yellow hall. After that, you join a line that weaves back and forth, until you finally get to buy a ticket.

Take an escalator back upstairs and take the elevator to the 80th floor. Get your picture taken.

Finally, some very long minutes or hours after you first got in the very first line, you take the last elevator to the 86th floor observation deck, where it seems as though the entire population of tourists in New York City is waiting.

On a bright Saturday morning, the process takes me 60 minutes.

Squeezed among the sailors, families, children, babies and couples crowding the rails of the Art Deco deck, you can look out on forever, or at least to New Jersey.

Romantic? I don't think so. I'm weary. I stay only 15 minutes. My feet hurt. My back hurts.

I return to the line to go back down. And then, I see her.

Behind me, a young woman is crying. Tears pour down her face. What's wrong? The man next to her is smiling. He murmurs, and she smiles and holds out her hand. Something sparkles.

"Excuse me, but did you just get engaged?" I ask.

"Yes, he just proposed!" says Tina Johnson, 22, of Dover, Del.

Shaun Baynum, her fiancé, 25, says he planned the whole thing for months. Even with the lines, crowds and difficulties, he shepherded Tina up to the top of the skyscraper, showed her around, then took her aside and knelt down on the hard, cold concrete and asked her to marry him, and she said yes. Some Marines who happened to be seeing the sights patted him on the shoulder for luck, and the happy couple rode down the elevator hand in hand, striding off into their new life, right after they stopped for pizza.

Later, I found out that it's possible to vastly shorten your wait at the Empire State Building by buying and printing your tickets in advance. Just go to www.esbnyc.com. You also can call ahead for wait times at 877-692-8439.

That is something good to know, especially if you are the type who likes to plan your spontaneous acts in advance.

But for Tina and Shaun, I suspect every dreary second of the time they spent in line at the Empire State Building that day will be remembered as wholly magical.