Bloggin it up

Wiieeeeeeeee 4

So I guess this all starts with games night at my house (Board games night).

This is the day before the Wii launch,

Oh by the way, Mike I just tried the leftover pineapple meatballs yesterday... any chance there are more, mmmmm.

Ok getting sidetracked...

Games night ends around midnight, but I don't realize how late it is until Jenn tells me the time.
My plan is to hit Walmart at 4AM, and get up at 3AM to do it.

So my head hits the pillow and the alarm clock seems to go off right away, look it's 3AM already.
I get up right away, and start getting ready, chair, warm clothes, gloves, book.

I get everything in the car and head off, I hit Walmart a full 1/2 hour earlier than I expected.
Drive into the Walmart parking lot... everything looks good, I don't see any people.. am I the first one here, that would really suck.

I drive over the speed bumps in front of the entrance, so the other doors are visible...
HOLY CRAP look at the line, the first thing I think of is, this reminds me of my cottage parties, everyone sitting in camp chairs, a tent setup... it looks like a lot more people than I have had at a cottage party though, am I going to get a console?

Well might as well get in line and figure it out.

I get in line and the guy 2 ahead of me tells me, that I am around #41, and that he counted heads and empty chairs when he got here.

There also seems to be a consensus in line that there are 63 Wii's.... Whew.
There are a few people that say there might be 30, but those people tend to be the kind of people that don't really look like they know what they are talking about, or so I choose to believe.

So I am sitting in line for 3 1/2 hours, it was cold, and I wish I had thought of wearing ski pants, but the time went pretty fast.

So around 6:00 the crowd starts getting more excited, the tent is gone, most of the chairs are also gone, and the line has... condensed, everyone is much closer to the doors, there is one or two random people in line yelling things like, "let us in", "Hurry up", but otherwise the line was very civil and orderly (unlike any of the US news reports about the PS3)

Also, at 6:00 my lovely and gorgeous girlfriend Jenn got out of bed to bring me a coffee and bagel from Tim's :-)

Jenn shows up around 6:40, people are getting excited, the line compacted some more, still lots of elbow room but if I stuck my arms out and spun I would smack a good 3-4 people. At 4AM I would have missed everyone and just looked like a crazy person spinning.

A few Walmart employees come out and start telling people, some rules, like "no running" it is impossible to hear exactly what they are saying at the front.

Then they ask everyone to get into a line, and everyone not buying a console to get out of line.
We each get a ticket with our number in line on it (I end up being #38).

They let 10 people in at a time, to get their console / games / controllers. so that the first people have first bids on extras, Walmart managed the line really well.

The electronics section could have been organized much better, but with only 10 people at a time it wasn't that bad.

I get my Wii, Zelda and another Wiimote, and what I think is the last numchuck.

Yay, Wiieeeeeee 5 and sleepy Matt coming soon to a computer screen near you

posted by Matt @ 9:27 AM