:Nintendo Widow

Last weekend, Danny camped out at Target to get one of the 60 Nintendo Wiis they had for sale. Here is his very thorough account of the cold, the discomfort, the drama and the euphoria he experienced once he got his hands on that little white box.

Wii for Me!

I ended up getting myself a Wii at launch.
The original plan was to go to a local Toys R Us that was having a midnight launch. Even thought they had taken preorders, they were supposed to have some surplus. I was going to go out there and try my luck with the extras after midnight. If that didn’t work out I was going to go home and then get up early and go by the near by Target, Best Buy and non-midnight launching Toys R us, which all opened 1 hour apart (8, 9, and 10 AM respectively). The actual plan was a little different. I drove out to the midnight launch TRU only to see a line that was wrapping all the way behind the building. I decided to pass on even getting out of the car and went home to regroup.
On the way home I thought that I should at least just check Target and see if the line was short. Target was supposed to get 60 units and I was there earlier in the afternoon and saw about 10 to 15 people with tents and stuff camping out, so I thought my chances might be OK. Needless to say I had decided to go ahead and try out waiting overnight. I made a quick pit stop at home and then headed to target. I got there around 11 PM and there were quite a few people there already. I couldn’t tell exactly how many so I got out of the car and went to wait. I asked the people at the end of the line what number they were and they replied with any where from 55 to 65. I thought, “Well, I’ll hang out for a bit and see if anyone comes up with a more promising count. Meanwhile, I got a call from my friend Rodney who had managed to get himself a reserve at a GameStop. He was waiting outside the store to simply pick up his console at midnight. I was quite jealous. But he gave me some encouragement and we killed a few minutes chatting. Around 11:45 PM, somebody went through and did a thorough count of the line that placed me at number 56. The problem was that I had seen a lot of people coming and going from the line. Most of them I recognized from when I first got there so I know they didn’t just cut and had gone to find a bathroom or something. But there’s no telling how many had been gone while that guy was doing the count. So I was still not very confident.
The guy standing in line in front me had gotten there seconds before I did. Around this time he started asking me the time every 5 or so minutes. I jokingly asked, “Are you going to keep asking the time until the doors open?” He replied, “I can’t help it man, I’m getting excited!” “Well, we still have a ways to go until 8 AM so you should probably relax,” I said. Then he got a sour look on his face and asked, “They’re not doing a midnight launch here.” I replied, “Uhh… no.” He looked thoughtful for a second and then apparently decided that it wasn’t worth the wait and took off. All I could think was, “1 down, 50 something to go.”
People started showing up behind me and I told them the best info I knew. Supposedly I was number 56. Around midnight these 3 high school aged kids (3HSK) got dropped off by their parents. By my estimates, these kids were numbers 59, 60 and 61, which really kind of bummed them out thinking that one of them wouldn’t get it. Around 12:15, the guy who ended up being the actual 60th person showed up. He was the first person after the 3HSK. Nobody knew this until 8 AM though. Reasonably confident that I would get Wii, I went ahead and committed myself to spending the night in the Target parking garage. Yes, I am that guy, and I am that cool.
About 12:45, this van full of kids drove up and asked the people in line if anybody wanted a Wii now instead of waiting 8 hours. Turns out they had apparently been able to acquire one at midnight and were looking to sell it to some desperate fan boys (or girls, yes there were a few there). Unfortunately for them, most people know that this system is not expected to be as rare as the PS3 and everyone pretty much laughed at their $800 asking price. Except for one kid who misunderstood and thought they were offering $800 for somebody’s spot in line. After they explained that that wasn’t the case, he laughed at them too.
For the first few hours I passed the time making small talk with the people in line with me and talking on the phone. Around 2 AM I got a call from Rodney who had been at home playing his pre-ordered Wii. He informed me that it was “definitely worth the wait.” Easy to say for a guy who didn’t have to actually wait.
I started out the night knocking over a Target shopping cart and using it as a chair. Since the cart wasn’t a real square or anything, this made the angle of my seat a few degrees off horizontal. This is very bad for your neck and back. Don’t do it. Bring a folding chair like all the other reasonable campers.
People were doing lots of different things to pass the time. Most people had a DS Lite, though I saw a few DS Phats and even 1 Game Boy Advance SP. I had brought my DS Lite with plans of jumping in on some multiplayer Tetris, Meteos, or Mario Kart but, I was really uncomfortable sitting on my shopping cart and I didn’t feel like standing and trying to play. I eventually got a little tired and thought I might try and sleep some since I still had over 6 hours to go. I tried sort of laying on the cart to sleep. This is an even worse idea than sitting on the cart. Don’t do it. Looking around, there were a few groups of people who had brought and were playing board games. (Sorry for the picture quality, these were taken by me, and with a phone.)

The kids in the left of the photo were playing Lord of The Rings Risk. The kids in the right were playing Monopoly. In addition, the 3HSK behind me were also playing Monopoly. The weirdest thing I saw people doing to pass the time was pushups. Yes for some the reason the Monopoly kids ahead of me periodically took a break to do pushups while the rest of their friends made fun of them.
The rest of the night was pretty uneventful except for around 2 or 3 AM we all heard a bunch of yelling and screaming from a few levels down. By the way, this Target that I was at was few levels above a Best Buy, which had Wii line of its own even longer than Target’s. Come to find out later that some jackass group of kids attacked the Best Buy campers with water balloons. It was pretty damn cold outside so I would have screamed too.
The rest of the night drug on until around 6:00 AM when we saw the first Target employee enter the store. This was followed by lots of false alarm commotion when other employees showed up and when they would come back outside to take a smoke break.
I had heard from others in line that at 7:00 AM, Target would come out and hand out tickets for their 60 Wiis, finally giving everyone the actual count. At 7:00 AM, an employee came out and said they wouldn’t being doing that until 8, when the store opens. Kind of a let down but they did follow that up with bringing everyone in line free soda’s and popcorn.

Just before 8:00 AM, they came and handed out the tickets. I was number 54. WooHoo!!!

The 3HSK were happy because, unlike what they thought all night, all 3 of them would get one. Target finally opened their doors and we got to form another line inside the store.

This line was extremely slow. They were only allowing 2 people into the electronics department at a time, to pick out their games and accessories and buy their system.

Around 8:30 or so, the mom of one of the 3HSK showed up to wait for them and take them home. She saw the line moving (or not actually) and decided to do some shopping in the store. She came back with the cart a bit later and had picked out some slacks for one for the 3HSK. She told him they didn’t have any with the size 31” waist and he said he didn’t care. Then she asked him, “How about you go try these on while you wait in line, I can hold your ticket.” He replied with the typical insulted, embarrassed teenage tone, “MOM!?!? NO!!!” “Fine… Fine,” she said. They were all in good spirits though and nobody was actually annoyed or anything.
Finally my turn came up. I told the game aisle employee what games to bring me (Zelda, Super Monkey Ball, and Red Steel) and I grabbed an extra Wiimote (they had run out of the nun chucks). Target was running a special for that day where you got one of those cool Target Wii gift cards worth $20 if you bought 3 games, so I got that too. I paid for my loot and left.
On the way home (I was now 9:30 AM) I decided I could either go home and set up the Wii and probably not get any sleep until Sunday night, or I could go straight to bed when I get home and get up around noonsih and start playing then. While I was freezing all night long, I kept dreaming of sleeping in a warm bed, so I opted for that.
Aside from a few hours were I was calling myself an idiot, the experience was really cool. I’m really glad I did it and it was obviously worth it because I got my Wii. Yay!