I have a nice 36" HDTV, so the plasma wasn't tempting me. But, I figured the XBox was worth about two hours in line.
I got up at 5:15, took my time and showered and headed to the Roseville store.
I figured getting there by 6:00 would mean either being just in time or way too late. I expected either a handfull of people or a line around the corner. I was mostly pessimistic and if I saw more than 15 people in line I was going to just turn around and go home. I was preparng myself for disappointment.
To my surprise, there were 8 people in line when I got there at 5:45. I quickly parked and the car behind me dropped a guy off, so I was the tenth person in line. Within literally minutes there were 15 people in line. By 6:00 there were 20 and by 7:00 the line went around the building and I lost track.
Everybody was there for the plasma. One couple ahead of me had spent the night in sleeping bags and another lady drove up from Modesto (140 miles away) at 3:00 AM. We first 10 were pretty jovial and were widdling away the time BSing about stuff.
The lady came out about 10 minutes early and handed out the vouchers at which time three gangsters got out of a car and joined their hoodlem pal in fifth place in line. Fortunately the lady wasn't down with that, but one of them managed to score something when she moved down the line somehow.
So they open the store and, as always, some prick in slacks and a dress shirt looking like a used car salesman from the automall across the street bolts for the door from the opposite side the line is on and tries to shove his way past me without luck and the couple behind me starts berating him, but he says it's okay cause the store is open now and he's just there to browse.
My priority is to snag a couple good, but affordable games for the XBox since I was yet to decide if I wanted to sell it or keep it (most likely the later if I can get an MCE extender for a good price). Some employee was getting Doom 3 for someone else getting an XBox so I had him grab me Burnout 3 and X-Men Legends. Burnout 3 was $29 online but was marked $39 in store, but I figured oh well. Second, I wanted the Kodak camera, but by the time I got over there it was long gone.
I ran into the prick used car salesman guy standing by the plasmas which were by the XBox's. He asked me if it was true you needed a voucher and I explained, unable to contain an evil grin, that nobody was getting a plasma or XBox without a voucher and how the lady had handed them out to people in line.
So I grabbed 3 packs of the 30pk Memorex CD-Rs and got in line.
Burnout turned out to be on sale for $19.99, so I walked out with an XBox, Burnout 3, X-Men Legends, and 90 good quality CD-Rs for $123 and no rebates to mess with.
They also had free Krispy Kreme donuts and handed out CompUSA t-shirts.
I was impressed with how they handled it. There were 3 security guards out front to keep order from at least 5:00 on. The vouchers were handed out in an orderly fashion. Those who tried to snag XBoxs without vouchers were turned away at the register. They held people at the door after so many had entered so the place wouldn't be a total zoo. They discovered right away that most of the advertised prices weren't ringing up correctly, but, uncharacteristically had decided not to man the registers with new trainees and the experienced cashiers quickly made manual price adjustments for the big ad items.
Only negative was that they only handed out vouchers for the laptop, plasma, xbox, and something else. There were a lot of people there for the Bose sound system and the camera, so there was still a stampede in those directions when the store opened.