Like so many reviewers who didn't get Apple Watches early, I stayed up late last night to order one of them when they became available in the online store. I snagged a 42mm space gray Apple Watch Sport with little trouble—surprisingly little trouble, compared to iPhone launch nights.

I’ve got the advantage of having already seen and worn various Apple Watch models in person, and I know pretty much what they look like and how they'll fit my wrist. Most of you haven't. Your best bet for a pre-launch introduction to the Apple Watch is to go into your nearest brick-and-mortar Apple Store, where Apple will be demoing the watches starting today.

So I can tell you what that experience is going to be like, I scheduled two try-on appointments for the Apple Watch today: one regular appointment for the standard watch, and one fancy appointment to try on the Apple Watch Edition.

Apple Watch: Quick and simple

Any old Apple Store will offer you 15-minute appointments to look at the stainless steel Apple Watch or the Apple Watch Sport; I easily snagged a reservation at the 14th Street Apple Store a couple blocks from the PATH stop.

Some employees were waiting by the door to ask where I was headed—they directed me to a second person, who handed me off to a third person, who took me to another person at an empty Apple Watch station. You might have to worry about a line if you try to show up without an appointment, but if you book it ahead of time you’ll be ushered in without much delay.

Each station is equipped with a sliding drawer full of different Apple Watch faces and bands, and you can try on either the stainless model or the Apple Watch Sport in both 38mm and 42mm sizes (42mm worked best for my gawky man-wrists).

The employees will let you try on pretty much whatever you want as long as you stay within the bounds of your 15-minute appointment, though there were enough empty spots left in the Apple Watch demo area that I could probably have stayed longer if I had wanted. Two employees, left with nothing else to do, were excitedly swapping out bands and trying watches on for themselves—the employee running my demo told me that they had received some training but actually hadn’t gotten to handle watches themselves before today.

The watches in the drawers are all in a non-interactive demo mode. You can see animations and occasionally feel some haptic wrist feedback, but if you actually want to interact with the UI you'll need to do it using a separate watch. It was embedded next to what appeared to be an iPad running an app that would walk you through the Apple Watch basics.

Since I've already tried the watch on, I was able to focus primarily on checking to see what these Apple Store employees knew about the product they're selling. My experience varied pretty widely from employee to employee, depending at least in part on how enthusiastic that employee was about the Apple Watch. My helper could answer most of my questions with some help from the reference material available on the nearby iPad, while the two employees trying on the Apple Watches for themselves answered a couple of my questions from memory.

Another employee, who seemed like she was moving from station to station offering air support, was available for slightly more complicated questions. (I wanted to know whether the remote camera shutter app on the watch would let you change filters or shooting modes on your phone; you apparently need to set all of that stuff directly on your phone.)

These quick demo sessions do just about what you’d expect—they let you see how an Apple Watch looks and fits and give you some vague idea of what they can do. But because the watch relies so heavily on your phone to feed it data, you really won’t get an idea of how it will integrate into your digital life without tethering it to your phone and wearing it around for a few days.

Apple Watch Edition: Rolling out the red carpet

Only a handful of stores are able to schedule appointments for the Apple Watch Edition, and the 14th Street store isn't one of them. Instead, I went up to the flagship Fifth Avenue store, which is much busier. (A company offering Apple Watch cases had set up shop outside, complete with banner and people in costume. You can never escape the case makers.)

Right up front, it's clear that Edition appointments are different from regular appointments. There are far fewer available slots, and the appointments last for a luxurious half an hour instead of 15 minutes.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I walked in—I spent some of the time in between appointments watching that scene from Pretty Woman so I would know how to handle it if the employees took a look at my sensible sneakers, untucked shirt, and falling-apart laptop bag and determined that I couldn't possibly have the means to afford a five-figure watch.

Luckily that didn’t happen, and I was quickly whisked off of the packed show floor and into a small private room by an almost ridiculously helpful, pleasant Apple Store employee. I was offered a bottle of water. I declined, but it’s a nice touch. The employee and I sat across a small table from one another and we chatted, and I asked questions while we waited for the Editions to be brought into the room.

Because of how much they cost, Editions are brought in two at a time in their small, fancy boxes—these boxes also happen to serve as charging cradles, which isn’t the case for the cheaper models. You’ll be asked to specify which combination of watch faces and bands you’ll want to see at the start of your appointment, and a second employee will retrieve them.

The watches themselves are still in the non-interactive demo mode, and there’s no extra little watch caddy you can use to actually poke at the watch yourself—you’ll need to go out to the tables on the floor to do that. Whether because of coincidence or extra training, though, the employee in the Edition room really knew her stuff, and she ably answered all the questions about functionality and bands that I asked. The only questions she couldn't answer were the ones that Apple itself isn’t providing answers to—most importantly, how long can one expect one of these $10,000-and-up watches to be supported.

I looked at a standard gold 42mm watch with a midnight blue Classic strap and a rose gold 42mm watch with a white sport band—you can use any ol’ Apple Watch band in the Editions, of course, but there are special versions of the bands with gold in them if you want to match the body of the watch. The color of the Digital Crown is dictated by the band the watch originally came with, so if you buy a watch with a red band you’ll always have a red spot on the crown. If you want to see other watches, including non-Edition models, those can be brought back, too, as long as you don’t run over your appointment time.

As previously reported, the royal treatment doesn’t end when you leave the store. Edition buyers will have another chance to have a guided, one-on-one meeting when they receive their watches, or they can do the same thing live over FaceTime from the comfort of their palatial estates. It seems plausible that Apple will eventually want to set more limits for Edition try-ons to filter out looky-loos and riffraff like myself. But for now, even if you’re not planning on buying an Edition, it’s a quieter, more pleasant way to be guided through the try-on experience.