The Consumer Hell introduction and the eight subpuzzles

This puzzle was so large that it bled into other parts of the hunt! At each of the first six numbered puzzles, we also handed out a Consumer Hell subpuzzle. The idea was that teams could make substantial progress on the subpuzzles before they even arrived at the shopping center where this puzzle took place.

The SF Shopping Centre has eight circular floors connected by spiralling escalators. Each subpuzzle solved to something that could be found on one of the eight floors of the mall, and when the subpuzzles were put in the same order as the floors, the blue circles corresponded to the beginnings and ends of escalators. "Riding" from floor 1 to floor 8 and back and taking letters along the way gave DINING AREA IN METREON, (answer word) PITCHFORK.

As the bottom part of the mall closed down (the Nordstrom's floors stay open an hour later) and the crowds thinned out, security guards caught on to what we were doing and told us that we couldn't do a treasure hunt in the mall (even though we were buying lots of food!) We ended up giving partial credit to some teams based on the number of subpuzzles that they had solved and the progress that they had made toward the final solution.

Solutions: