I swung by Amy's place and we were at Wrentham around 6:45. First stop was the Dunkin Donuts to pick up our traditional breakfast sandwiches. It was packed with people who had completed their shopping (the stores opened at midnight), including a woman who boldly tried to steal our order.
Driving to the parking lot, although we could see signs that the lot had been full at times (i.e. cars parked over curbs and on grass), we found tons of parking spaces.
Amy and I stopped by the help desk to pick up the AAA coupon booklet and then we were off!
I won't go into details about stores or presents, but to sum it up, we spent four hours walking around trying to track stuff down and ended up only picking up a few gifts. Lines in some stores were very long but moved quickly (Gap, J Crew, Nautica). Some stores took the elitist tactic -which some could argue was fire codes but somehow I doubt it - making customers line up outside the store like it was a club (Ugg, Coach, Timberland).
Another funny observation was that we saw a lot of people hauling around suitcases to carry everything they bought (I managed to covertly take a picture of one such person):
By the time we left (around 11 am), the parking lot was packed and cars were circling around and stalking shoppers.
This is a shot of how busy it was by where we parked. We even had a car try to back up and follow us to the car, giving up when he realized how far down we were.
That's why we consider 6 -7 am the perfect time to go; it's after the initial midnight madness rush and before the rest of the shopping world wakes up. Plus, some stores only had sales that lasted until 10 am.
I've got Phu and Pete's gifts done and hope to get the rest of my people on my list completed today while shopping with Jen - we're heading to the mall today!
1 comment:
Damn you Joyce. I was too scared to venture out on my own...
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