* Do NOT wipe your iPad before doing the trade-in. They need to be able to get to the iPad Settings app to get some information off of the iPad.
that is good advice, but if you wipe it at home and then go thru the setup just enough to get to the home screen they can still get the info they need. they are looking for the apple M LL/X SKU which is in the settings app.
if you are running iOS 5.x on the iPad then as long as they have a guest wifi network in the store you will be ok. you can do the initial setup of an ios5 device using wifi. i am not sure what version of iOS this standalone setup came in. anyway that's what i did while i was waiting in line. i didn't want to wipe mine at home to save the hassle of restoring them in case they decided not to take my iPads for some reason.
otherwise, you will be sunk as you need to hook older OSs to a mac/pc to activate them.