I went yesterday from about 12-4 pm. Crowds weren't great, but I've seen the much worse. There was a large Steel City booth in on area and their products were sprinkled throughout the show. Guess they're the new kid on the block and making a big push to be accepted.
Aside from the manufacturer dedicated booths, General tools were found almost everywhere. It appears that they've been fully accepted as Canada's premiere power tool supplier. And as usual, there were plenty of gadget related tools with someone doing demos of what they can do. Some were snake-oil pitches, many were borderline as to usefulness and a few were quite interesting. Laguana had a large booth, there was one area set aside for women's woodworking and there were actually quite a few women who were in there making some basic woodworking project under the tutaledge of a personal instructor. Sawstop had a booth there with the guts of one saw exposed so those so interested could examine it and ask questions. There didn't appear to be any live hot dog tests, but there plenty of videos playing showing the hot dog test.
I asked the Sawstop rep the same question that I ask all potential suppliers of tablesaws. "Since I use a wheelchair, could this saw cabinet be cut down
4"-6" at the base to make it more accessible to me?" Sawstop has too many internal workings to accommodate that request, but the General rep felt that it might be possible with them doing the alteration and still maintaining the original warranty. He will look into it for me. The only solution the Sawstop rep could come up with was the standard one of using a raised floor around the saw, something I've previously considered.
I didn't sit in on any of the hourly shows that were being presentated, guess I felt that most of them were for the beginner woodworking and the uninitiated.
And as mentioned, there really wasn't anything substantial as far as a sit and eat lounge, aside from the fact that all foods on the premises were very much overpriced. Smart thing to do is when you're going, go to some fast food location on the way. I went through a Harvey's drive-through.
At about 1:00 pm, all parking surrounding the building was temporarily closed due to being at full capacity, but I was about to finagle my way in since I use a wheelchair and needed to be reasonably close to the building entrance to allow me to get attend.
That's about it. The show is essentially the same every year. I go mostly to window-shop and to kick a few tires so to speak.