Wii Timeline

Never thought I would be one of those folks who camp out overnight for a console launch, but since I've been obsessing about it for months, I thought I might as well get one. Now we had two preorders which we were planning to put on ebay, but we decided to get one for ourselves with the possible profit from the sale of both Wiis.

Anywho, I had a wedding yesterday, an eight hour gig that ended at 9:30pm, so I thought I'd try for the midnight launch at Freddy's. But getting there, I had the feeling that it wasn't going to happen, because the line was already from one end of the building to the other. I approached the last guy in line and he was the 120th, and since I knew there were only going to be 90 Wiis, I told them good luck and went home.

Now despite my educated guess that I will probably be within the 99th customer range if I went to Target at 2 or 3 in the morning, I couldn't relax and my headache wasn't getting better, so I decided to head over to Target at 12:30am, some 7 and a half hours before the store was to open, and camp out there. I wore flannel jammie pants under my jeans, a t-shirt, a fleece sweatshirt, and two jackets, a baseball cap, and packed a sleeping bag, my laptop, some magazines, and a folding chair and headed over to Target.

When I got there, the line had grown slightly since I swung by two hours before, so I staked out my spot, and got comfy. I tried reading, but the words weren't making a whole lot of sense since my headache was still kicking my butt. But here's the approximate timeline.

Got there. Found out that there were a few people there who were in other lines at other places. The guy in front of me had been at Toys R Us for 2 to 3 hours and he was just 2 people short of getting a ticket. He headed over to Target immediately without packing for the over night. There were canopies, tents, sleeping bags and lawn chairs strewn out. Mostly guys, some girls who just showed up to offer support, snacks, and sleeping bags.

One of the guys at the front of the line, a husky looking dude, was pretty livid. He insisted on counting off each person because the line that he was line grew and bumped him out of candidancy for a Wii. I was number 47. He told everyone that if anyone tried to jump in line, to let him know, since him and his friend were bouncers.

Meanwhile, a couple of teenagers, sharky looking dealers that crept with intention and greed, come on and decided to try to sell their Wii to us. They didn't have it in hand, but they were telling us that they would sell it for $350, a hundred dollar profit.

Nobody bit, everyone seemed to be in the long haul. However, at some point the guy in front of me had offered $325 for it, because the two sharks came back and told him that someone at the front of the line had offered $360 for it, and if he wanted to match it. The guy passed, and the two sharks went back to their cars, and left. Thing is, nobody offered any money up front. Like I said, sharks. I think I was surprised that these two kids were such hustlers.

It was almost a whole hour before someone got behind me. He said hi and I said, "Hello."

"No?"

"No, I said, Hello."

This was a party of four, a dad, a lady, and a ten year old girl, and they were each wanting to get one each. I highly doubt using your children to get a console seems rather dubious. But hey. Whatever. The poor little girl had to sleep had to endure the cold wind and temps in a sleeping bag, and the chairs were toppling on her for a while too.

I space out after a while, I decided not to worry about the laptop in my bag and put it back in the trunk. I got into the sleeping bag because my butt was freezing, since that was the direction the wind was blowing. So I sat in the chair with the sleeping bag up to my nose, and my hood up. I probably looked a little odd, this clump with glasses looking out. I wasn't sleepy, but I was spacey, so I just closed my eyes and focused on the music. It's nice when once in a while, you don't worry about your playlist, and you just listen to the song. I like to isolate certain instruments, and listen to the different sounds in a song sometimes.

The trickle of people slow down and the guy in front of me attempts to sleep, despite his vocal paranoia of beetles climbing on him. He didn't have a sleeping bag, but a blanket and a hooded sweatshirt. The guys up front were hardcore, staying awake and gabbing about games and whatnot. A gaggle of them clutched onto their Nintendo DS-es, though I suspect many gave up after a while because their fingers couldn't withstand the cold.

I space out for a while, and then time passes. Sometimes I open my eyes, staring into the parking lot, and guiltily enjoying the nothingness of nothing. I decided after a while that if I pull the sleeping bag over my head, it was actually kinda comfy. Note that throughout the whole night, I was sitting in my chair. Didn't want to lay on the cold ground.

At around five the crowd slowly grew, and I decided that now was a good time to start a movie, so I put in "V for Vendetta." At around six, Target employees came around and roused everyone up, and told us to get into a straight line and to clean up the sleeping bags and lawn chairs. We did, so that we could wait in line while standing up in the cold without our blankets. They came around occasionally to answer questions, and hand out popcorn. There were many hopefuls thinking they might open early, but really no such luck. I put my stuff away, and now had to stand and wait for two hours. My chair decided that it wasn't going to accomodate my fat ass anymore, so it broke.

At 7, adding insult to injury, a trickle turned into rain. I was figeting all over, bouncing on the spot because I was tired, rocking out, cold, and I had needed to pee since 2 am. Finally, they announced that they were letting 30 in at a time, and I felt no remorse for the 100 and up customer who didn't get a Wii because, well, they didn't commit. Anyway, they went home, and we went in the store, where the campers were plunking down money for the system.

My grand total was 498 and some change, and I tried not to wince too much, reminding myself that I was going to get a return on them later.

And I went home, and passed out on the bed.

Impressions of the Wii Later.