Sunday, December 16, 2007

Wii...

...got one.

And kind of on a whim. Last weekend John and had the chance to play on our friends' console and we became hooked on the Wii. We decided we needed to add one to our household. Now. For Christmas...at least for End of Year Bonus Time. Good enough reason to spend money, right?

Of course, it is only a week to Christmas and we were getting in on the hottest game in town. John spent last week looking for deals and getting to know the delivery schedules of the closest Wii dealers. Target looked good...Costco had a package deal..and there was the game store right around the corner...the breakdown went like this:

Costco gets them in at various times but only puts them out in the morning because of the pandemonium they cause.

Target gets a regular shipment Sunday morning.

Game Stop has a delivery on Friday between 10 AM and 1 PM.

Disadvantages?

Costco bundle is $500 and still has only one controller. Not such a great deal, plus you have to call everyday to see of they might put some out the next morning.

Game Stop wait time is hard on jobs and babies. More on that later.

Target is an early-rise job. And "everyone" knows when they get their shipment. So it can get crazy in line.

Friday I went to Game Stop after John told me they might have gotten their shipment in. I was in the store about 10:30 and a small group had gathered. Numbers were passed around. I was took the #5 spot form a man who was believed to have left the store. The other folks in the store knew what the delivery woman looked like. They had been here before. Apparently this store only gets a handful of units at a time...and they always instantly sell out. I had the Bee with me so I wasn't going to wait past 11 AM. We had a park date to get to. Just as I was getting ready to go, word arrived that the delivery woman was on her way. The store became more and more excited...one woman groaned that she was going to lose her job (she was on a loong lunch) but she couldn't leave--not this close to success. Another woman shared the fact that she had been trying for a Wii since November and still hadn't been able to secure one. She was #1 in line this time and wasn't going anywhere.

The Wii's were counted. Six units. I actually got a bit excited. I was five, after all, and this was our FIRST attempt to get a Wii. John's sussing out of the situation had payed off.

Then, sadness. The original #5 came back into the store. He hadn't really left--he had been pacing in front of the building. I was bumped to #7 and out of the running.

Oh well.

The Costco "deal" wasn't much of one, so John and I decided to skip that madness.

That left Target and Sunday, this, morning. John set the coffee pot last night and the alarm for 5:45 AM. He was up and out and in line by 6:10. He ended up with the #13 spot for a double holiday shipment of Wii's totaling 90! Woo-hoo! Wii-ness had been secured...along with extra controllers and nunchucks and games. Many games. In fact we returned later on in the day and purchased another game.

Check out his experience in line waiting
here.

Live blogging from the iPhone. Aren't we cool? And when I say "we" I mean "John".

So we have a new time sink addiction. And it is fun. But we did manage to get other grown-up things done today as well so we still have balance in our lives. And I might gain more as I learn to use that wii controller...

3 comments:

ambrosia ananas said...

Hoorah! Congratulations. They're so fun.

Yeah, we had a much easier time of it. We looked around at a few places last winter and decided to wait until there was less demand. Then over the summer, we went to Target about 10 minutes before the store opened. There were maybe fifteen people in line--and some of them weren't even waiting to get the Wii.

ambrosia ananas said...

If you want to email me your address, I'll see if I can figure out a way to ship some truffles over the break.

Anonymous said...

Oh, snap. You are one lucky mamacita!
I would *love* a wii.....I think the bowling looks like so much fun. Maybe I should sell my iPod and get myself some technology? Yessss....just be sure not to throw the controller through the tv screen ;)