Those of you who have a life may not know that Nintendo released its newest gaming console this weekend. It's called the Wii (pronounced whee) for some reason and all in all, it's pretty fun.
If you've ever met or heard of Dylan, you know that he
had to have this system on the day it came out. The story of how he finally bought one is long, but good. The main characters include Dylan, me, Seamus, my brother T, Dylan's brother T, Target, and the supervillian Wal-Mart.
Don't get me wrong, I didn't have anything against Wal-Mart before this time. I actually liked going there. One store for almost everything I could think of? Majorly cheap prices and a convenient location? Sign me up. I actually defended Wal-Mart when people would dis them. It's capitalism at work baby. But, as Mos Def said "I had a bad experience."
FRIDAY AFTERNOON 1500 hours
Dylan has been dying to get his hands on the Wii. He'd been reading about it, dreaming about it, and telling anyone who will listen how cool it was going to be. Naturally, even though he'd been sick all week, he got up early on Friday morning, went to work an hour early, worked through lunch, and left at 3pm. He raced home, grabbed me and Seamus and some warm clothes and sped to Wal-Mart, his Mecca of choice. Wal-Mart stays open all night, making it a terribly convenient place to camp out overnight. You can go in and use the bathroom, eat from the McD's there (or shop in the grocery part), get more blankets, a tent, or hand warmers. There's a plethora of items available to the determined Wii hunter. We couldn't see a line at first (I'm not sure how we missed the tents set up right in front) so he went inside and speedwalked to the Electronics department. Seamus and I followed at a more normal pace. He determined that there
was already a line outside and ran out to find it. After walking all the way around the building (which took a surprisingly long time) we finally found the line right in front. There were 21 people in line already, but that's ok because Wal-Mart managers said that they had 27 consoles available for sale. They were having a launch party on Saturday night at 10pm. Yes, Saturday night. Dylan would spend 35 hours waiting for the Wii. But that was ok with him, he was number 22 and was guaranteed a Wii within 2 days.
We bought him a small tent for $15 and filled it with the sleeping bags, sleeping pad, and blankets he'd brought. The people in line had gotten organized and made a list with everyone's names and cell numbers in the order in which they arrived. They seemed to be having a good time, discussing games and gaming systems, rumors they had heard about the Wii, and making fun of the people who had camped out for the PS3 (which came out Friday morning). As usual, Playstation made way too few of their consoles, and stores were getting them in in amounts of 3 and 6, instead of the 27 or 60 count Wii shipments. I took Shay home and sadly anticipated a weekend by myself. Since Dylan works all day, and then works on consulting when he gets home, weekends are our only time to play with him. We look forward to them all week.
FRIDAY EVENING 1900 hours
When Seamus went to bed I bribed my brother T to come over and play on the Xbox 360 so I could go over and hang out with Dylan at Wal-Mart. What a dedicated wife I am. I went over for a few hours and had a good time. I was smart and layered my clothing. I was quite comfy in the 35 degree weather and kept the group of nerd boys laughing. Then I came home and slept well in my nice warm bed while Dylan stayed and camped out in the cold. He actually didn't mind. The tend was warm and the meds he takes at bedtime totally knock him out for at least 8 hours. They're like sleeping pills. He had a good night's sleep when he finally went to bed.
SATURDAY 0830 hours
When Seamus and I woke up the next morning we moseyed on over there to see what was going on. We parked and walked over to the tent village. We could tell something was amiss because the nerds were in a nervous frenzy. I saw Dylan practically running into the store and called out his name. He turned and said, "You don't want to know."
"Know what?", I asked.
"Apparently they don't have 27 Wiis. They only have 20."
My jaw dropped, "What? I thought they counted them last night."
"Me too," he said.
Then he walked into the store and intercepted a group of nerds coming out. One of the managers had let one of the nerds into the back to count the Wiis himself.
"It's true," he said, "There are only 20 of them back there."
Needless to say there were a lot of pissed people standing in front of the Wal-Mart. We got even more pissed when we found out that nubmers 12-17 were taken up by a dad and his five kids. They had camped out, and were each planning to "buy" one. The kids were all under 15, so it was obvious that the real customer was the father. He was using his kids to get around the "one per person" rule. Even worse was when he disclosed the fact that they weren't planning on keeping any of them. They were selling them
all on Ebay. Dylan was looking murderous, so I quickly packed up his stuff and got him into the car.
Just short of cursing, he vented his feelings. I sympathized and tried to smooth things over, then got the bright idea to try somewhere else. Dylan was pessimistic, he'd wasted 17 hours at Wal-Mart and was worried that there wouldn't be any spaces left anywhere. We u-turned in the middle of University Parkway and headed towards Target.
SATURDAY 0850 hours
The tent city at Target was decidedly more unorganized than the one at Wal-Mart. Nobody knew how many people were in line or where the line ended. We finally found somebody in the know, and it turned out to be a manager of the Electronics Department at Target. He was camped in line along with several other Target employees. He told us there were 50+ Wiis available, and only about 25 people in line. Dylan was ecstatic, and immediately made himself the end of the line. We brought over his tent and supplies that we had haphazardly stuck in the
back of the car and started setting up camp. This night would be more challenging as Target closed at 10pm and wouldn't open until 8am on Sunday. Most of the places around the Target would also close, and the night was supposed to be even colder than the previous one. Plus, Target turned off their outside lights at 10pm, so there would be no staying up late to play card games...
1100 hours
He still wanted to do it, but he was exhausted. After setting up, running over to Wal-Mart to let the other 7 unlucky Wii hunters know about the extras available at Target, and a quick bite to eat, I could tell Dylan was failing. It was time for Seamus's nap, too, so I sent Dylan home with the baby so they could both sleep and Dylan could get a shower. They slept for about 3 hours while I read a book and did a little shopping. At Wal-Mart the other people in line didn't care if you went inside the store for an hour, or went to get a bite to eat. At Target the guys said "you'd better have somebody waiting with your stuff if you don't want to get bumped out of line." Nice attitude. It was definitely more cutthroat at Target.
1400 hours
Dylan and Seamus came back and we had a nice lunch together. They both looked much more refreshed, and I in the meantime had nearly finished a 350 page book called Maximum Ride. Interesting story, but that's another post for another time. We had some lunch and I took Shay home. I was hoping that my brother T could come over and babysit after Shay went to bed that night so I could go spend time with Dylan again. Nobody there was friendly, as they were each waiting in a group of their friends. Dylan was all alone and bored. Unfortunately, T was going out with friends that night and couldn't babysit. Dylan's brother T, though, lives in a basement apartment in our house and was willing to put a baby monitor in his room that night to listen for the baby. That way I could go camp out, too, and get another Wii for someone else who can't be disclosed here in case they read this blog. My brother T's plans changed and he was able to come over for the evening until D's T got home. Yay!
2000 hours
I got myself some warm bedding and clothes and went up to Target. We hung around reading magazines/books and chatting until the lights went off at 10, then we crawled into the tent and tried to get some sleep, which proved impossible. The people around us were still up and talking, and some guys right next to us pulled out a boom box and started blasting heavy metal screaming
"music" . Not exactly lullabies, if you know what I mean. The boom box happened to be sitting on the ground 3 feet from the head of our tent, and those nylon tent walls don't do anything to keep out the sound. I put up with it for about 2 hours, but at 12:30am I went out and asked them politely to turn the music down. Now, I had chatted with these guys before and they'd been nice, but it still took me 2 hours to work up the courage to say something. They very nicely turned it off and I went back into the tent to get some sleep.
It was then that I realized that just because the box said "2 man tent" didn't make it true. The tent was shaped like an isosceles triangle. The headroom was fine, great for two people, but unless one of us was a midget or a kid, our feet were going to have to occupy the same space at the same time. This is apparently impossible, due to the laws of matter and physics, so we had to both tuck our knees up to fit. Talk about uncomfortable. Plus we were sleeping on a concrete sidewalk in the middle of November in Utah. Needless to say the ground was cold and hard. Then there were the really "cool guys" who thought it'd be funny to drive by at 2am and honk their horns over and over. Man, I wish I was that cool. I finally dozed off at about 2:30, but by 3am I had a full bladder and needed a bathroom badly. If you've ever been to Provo at 3am you know that saying "nothing is open" is an understatement. These people roll up their sidewalks at 11pm, especially on a Saturday night. Time to prepare for the Sabbath, right? Only that didn't help me now.
Finally at about 4:30am I decided to brave the cold and find a bathroom. I remembered our old nemesis Wal-Mart was open 24 hours and hopped on the freeway. The next exit down was the Wal-Mart exit, it only took me about 2.7 minutes to get there, although to my bladder it seemed like an eternity. I made a beeline to the bathroom and then took a moment to walk over to the Health and Beauty section. Can anyone guess what I got there?
Earplugs!! It was a stroke of genius, let me tell you! When I got back to Target I immediately put them in and slept peacefully for about 1.5 hours until it was time to get up and get our "Wii tickets". Dylan had, of course, slept fine, especially after I got the music turned off, and was very refreshed and excited about the $380 he was about to spend.
The managers at Target were extremely organized and had come around to take digital pictures of us the night before to confirm our places in line. There were more Wiis for sale than people in line to get them, so we had no worries, but we didn't want a bunch of people showing up in the morning and trying to get in line with their friends in the front. We got our tickets and shopping lists (basically a list of all of the Wii components available like extra controllers, games, etc) at 7am. Dylan and I ended up being numbers 23 and 24 in line. Funny, since he was 22 at Wal-Mart. We then struck camp and neatly placed everything into the car. We then sat in the car since a freezing wind had come up and it was like 40 degrees warmer in the car. We waited some more.
SUNDAY MORNING 0800 hours
Finally the line began to form and the doors opened. We were allowed inside the warm store and stood in an orderly line to wait for our turn. A manager stood at the head of the line to oversee, and two employees would take your list, fill it, and bring it to the cashier (who obviously rang you up). We were home by 8:30, a very anticlimactic ending to the story I know, since we had church at 9am and I told Dylan we
had to go. We managed to make it through Sacrament, but Shay was tired and so were we, so we headed home for naps. 4 hours later we all woke up and tried out the Wii.
It's really quite fun. There's a sports medley game that came with the system. It's got baseball, bowling, golf, tennis, and a few other games. Dylan bought the new Zelda game Twilight Princess, as well. The neatest thing is that the controllers are completely wireless. They're called Wii remotes, or wiimote, and you have to point them at the screen to select things (sort of like a laser pointer). You get to set up your own "avatar" or character with tons of facial features to choose from, so you can make them look similar to you. I have my own controller and it remembers who my character is. I have stats and everything.
All in all, a good story, and an interesting time. I've never done anything like this before and I'm pretty sure I never will again. Unless they decide to launch something in the SUMMERTIME!! Hint, hint, Nintendo, Sony, and Microsoft. I've just never wanted anything bad enough to camp out for it. Well whatever, we're now the coolest people we know because we have this. I'm hoping it will be good enough for awhile, because we now own a Super Nintendo, Playstation, Playstation 2, Gamecube, Wii, Xbox, and an Xbox 360. That's too much gaming for one family. Somebody shoot me now, preferably with a wiimote.
