Wow. I'm gettin' some good entertainment just reading the stories. :up:

Um, I wasn't planning on going out really early or anything seeing as most of the DVD sales for all stores were going to be 2-Day things anyways. Went out at like 12 pm, got most of the DVDs I wanted with the exception of Weeds Season 2 for 12.99 at CC. :(

Scored 300 2-Disc for 5.98 at Target, that's cheaper than it was at BB as a doorbuster. Was pleasantly surprised by that seeing as I wasn't even going to pick it up but for $5.98 decided it was too good not to.

Oh, and my Walmart had the 24 packs on sale with the Season 6 DVD, so if you bought one at $19.99 and used the coupon, you got the second at $9.99 and the second had the Season 6 as well so it trickled down from there. I sold my fat sets at the beginning of the year hoping I'd be able to pick up the slim sets down the line, got Seasons 1-4 for $50.

Go to work and then go home and avoid shopping malls/electronic stores etc for the day.

From an AP story:
http://www.boston.com/business/techn...opping_season/

"While Black Friday is expected by some analysts to be the busiest day of the season, it's not a predictor of how retailers will fare in the season overall. In fact, the weekend only accounts for about 10 percent of overall holiday sales. But it does set the tone since what consumers see that day influences where they will shop for the rest of the year.

Last year, retailers had a good start during the Thanksgiving weekend, but many stores struggled in December and a shopping surge just before and after Christmas wasn't enough to make up for lost sales."

I got up at 3:45 this morning to hit a number of stores in Boston, where the economy is in pretty good shape. But outside of Best Buy and Circuit City, which were ridiculously mobbed, virtually every other store, including Wally World and Costco, I was in and out in 10 minutes at most.

I picked up a few things at Best Buy and Circuit, although like a lot of other people on this thread, I don't really understand what a lot of people were doing there! The Best Buy I went to, I was in one of those twisty checkout lines for about 1/2 hour, so I was looking at what other people were buying. Lots of stacks of $3 dvds, cheap video games, and promo tech items. As nodeer said, I can't believe someone got up at 5 am to save $20, but there were a lot of people who only had 5 or 6 cheap items in their baskets. And in any case, they had plenty of stock of those items.

I got to Circuit just after 5 am, and grabbed the one item I wanted, the 24" Samsung monitor, that was a great deal at $285 AR and after the AAA coupon. I was out in 20 minutes.

Other items:
Best Buy: various South Park seasons at 14.99. Half Life Orange Box and Bioshock at 24.99 each. Deadwood seasons at 41.99. Also Knocked Up and 300 for 6.99 each.

Wally World: Philips dvd player at 35.00, Casino Royale gift set 9.72. A few $3 and $5 titles like Inside Man and Illusionist. Wally World had stacks of Shrek 3, Oceans 13 and Ratatouille for $12, btw, might have been a one day special.

In any case, as the article suggested, the issue is not how busy things were today or this morning, but how things hold up in the next month. Black Friday is profitable for retailers, but retailers make most of their Xmas profits in the few days before the holiday.

As for me, I'm done, other than a few clothing stops tomorrow, unless something really great pops up.

Target, FYE, and Costco didn't have much of interest, and the ones I went to weren't that busy.

The one thing that I thought was great, almost no rebates!!!!!!!!!

Deadman don't know if you have a Walmart near you, they had this model for $35 today, don't know if it was a one day special, although its 'regular' price was $39.xx.

That's true. Good point.

And to be fair, I went to Best Buy afterwards and there was NO LINE AT ALL at 9:30am. For previous years at that time, I had to wait in line for a good hour there. I brought a book along to read for the long wait I was anticipating, but I just walked up and paid and got out. I actually was the ONLY person in line there! Maybe they just got more efficient (all the registers were open) from previous years.

Same deal when I went to Target. The Target I went to was in a mall and when I got there, there was no wait to cashout. By that time it was after 10am and the mall had basically just opened, but it was fairly empty.

But that Frys experience really freaked me out. I never saw a line like that to get into the building. Let alone at 5am in the morning!!!

I probably jumped the gun. I predict this will be a "black" Friday, but sales down from previous years (based on my experiences at Target & Best Buy) for most stores. Still doesn't mean that our economy is tanking, though.

Frys probably hit record sales levels for today alone. Everyone was buying widescreen TVs. That's good for us widescreen DVD afficionados!

Oh anther thing... while waiting in that 3 and a half hour line, there were a lot of interesting smells there at Frys. At times the odors coming from people's bodies (I'm not discounting myself, either; I just woke up from a 3 hour nap. I stink and am heading for the shower) was worse than being at the Comic-Con!

Walmart was a joke when I went there today. No organization in any regard to the DVDs. There was a shopping cart with DVDs just thrown in it with a tag on the front for one of the DVDs. They had 4 huge displays all pushed together so there was no way to look at any of them. The DVDs I went there to look for eventually were found by the second manager I asked over next to the frozen food section clear ACROSS the store. I guess you are just supposed to magically know where everything is. Too bad the managers don't even know.

Regardless, I was looking for Eragon but ended up just finding the 2 disc so I went up to the front. After 20 minutes they find it in FULL SCREEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!

UGG!!! So I say in a nice way "No Widescreen? Why is that? All of your TVs in back are ALL widescreen?" And what to I get back....just a blnak stare. I left. I hope they enjoyed putting all the crap back that I had just put in a dozen shopping bags. And a MERRY CHRISTMAS to all!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I went back to Fry's around 4:30 p.m. and the line was still just as long as it was when I left there earlier around 10 a.m. That was just craziness. Suffice it to say, I did not join in the line and just left empty-handed once more.

Well my plan worked out beautifully - up about 8:00 and had a couple cups of coffee while I enjoyed my morning in peace.

Here is my list of BF goodies (plenty of DVDs are part of the list, after all, this is the DVDtalk forum:) ):

Best Buy (on-line)

Miami Vice The Complete Series - $99.99
Music CDs - Coco W/DVD (Cobie Caillat) $9.99, High School Musical 2 $7.99, Just Like You (Keyshia Cole) $7.99, As I Am (Alicia Keys) $9.99, Back To Black W/BB Exclusive Tracks $9.99
Kodak Easyshare 7.1 MP Digital Camera (12X Optical Zoom) $189.99

Best Buy (in-store)

Orange Box (PC) 24.99 (gift)
Resident Evil Wii Edition $19.99
Rapala Fishing (Wii) $19.99
Sony STR D6510 5.1 Channel AV Reciever $99.99
Harmony 550 Universal Remote $99.99
Garmin Nuvi 200 $170.00

Walmart

King Kong WS - $2.97

Fry's Electronics

Spider-Man Trilogy Blu Ray (gift) $45.00
Ultra Trance 07 Music CD $13.99
Daredevil / Elektra 2 disc editions $5.99 each
Death Proof / Planet Terror 2 disc unrated $9.49 each
The Dark Crystal 25th Anniversary Edition 2 disc $5.00
Speed WS $3.99
La Femme Nikita Seasons 1-5 $14.99 each
Wii Games: Namco Museum Remixed $19.99, Legend of the Dragon $9.99
Maxtor 300 GB Internal Hard Drive $50.00
E-GeForce 8600 GT Graphics Card $99.99

Spent lots of money, but I am a very happy camper.

So went back out later today just to look around... Was able to get the House of a 1000 Corpses on BD for 13.99 + won a $3.00 off coupon at FYE so got it for $10.99.

I went out to a couple of stores at 5:00 pm after I got out of work. I just wanted to pick up a couple of DVDs and Games. The stores were still busy but I had no problems checking out. I ended up getting:

Band of Brothers $32.49 (Best Buy)
Def Jam Icon - Xbox 360 $14.99 (Best Buy)
The Orange Box - Xbox 360 $48.00 (Target)
Metalocalypse $22.49 (FYE)

This was the first year that I really had nothing that I had to have. Woke up at noon, got to CC at 3pm and bought James Bond the 2nd and Crank (which I found lying in the photo area). That was my whole wish list, so a good day. And I am well rested.

Very Very easy shopping day for me:

Had lunch, watched The Mist and then went to Best Buy around 4pm.

Picked up The Wire seasons 1-3 at $27.49 each and Rome season 2 for $41.99. Also picked up 300, A Beautiful Mind and The Good Shepherd. Spent around $153 bucks. There wasn't really any huge crowd and the parking lot had plenty of spaces.

Then I drove over to Circuit City where I bought alot of $2.99, $3.99 and $5.99 DVD's. All of the boxes were empty where they were stored from the morning. But, I managed to find every title I wanted just by looking in their respective genre sections. Purchased about 16 DVD's/CD's and spent around $97 bucks.

No crowds, No overnight sleepovers, I found everything I wanted and It was a good day. Now I will casually pick up an item here and there for the remainder of my holiday shopping, but I am done for the most part.

Hubby went to Circuit City to get the James Bond Vol. 1 on sale for under $19 & he had a $5 rewards certificate. It wasn't in the ad, but he thought he'd see if the Vol 3. they had was also at the sale price instead of the $80 tag. It sure was, so he picked that up too.

I just picked up a few tops from Target & a pair of earrings from Bergner's. (The earrings were $30, marked down clearanced, then Black Friday extra 40% off & the $10 in store coupon got me those earrings for a total of 85¢ )

could not find this one. was it a secret sale?

my only plan was to go to BB and pick up the Six Feet Under set and it was a major pain in the ass but was able to get it for $114.99 in the store (same as BB.COM price)

Apparently, the economy is just fine over in your neck of the woods...

My gameplan was to wait until the early Friday morning only sales were over before going to any of the stores for the longer running 2-day sales, so I waited until about 1:30pm to head out to shop.

First I headed over to Circuit City closest to me to see what they had left of the DVD specials (particularly the $3.99 ones). Well, in typical Circuit City fashion, they had them in just one small shallow bin and very few in supply so that the best stuff was already gone (if they even stocked them at all in the first place). So I just left without buying anything at all there. (BTW, the checkout line when I was there was around 4 customers, so that wasn't an issue if I found sometime I wanted.)

I left there and went to the nearby Target to look at their DVD specials. They had a lot of the TV season sets, so I picked up "Family Guy" Vol. 3 & 4 ($14.98 each), Seinfeld Season 8 ($14.98) and - an unadvertised surprise - Seinfeld Season 7 ($15.98). The movies on sale for $3.98 were unfortunately almost all in "Full Screen" so I just picked up "The Shawshank Redemption" ($3.98), the only movie available there in Widescreen besides "Batman Begins" (which I already have, so I passed on it). The checkout line I got in had just a single person in front of me.

I then went to the next door Best Buy to look at their DVD specials, which unlike "bait & switch" CC, was still pretty well stocked. I picked up 2 copies of "The Descent" unrated (one for me, one for some friends) and a copy of "Layer Cake" - all in Widescreen and all $4.99 each. The checkout line had 3 people in front of me.

And that was it. I was over and done with BF in a little over an hour total. However, I may swing by Target again today because their sale runs through Saturday just to see what's still left for some cheap Xmas gifts.

Wow, it must have sold out, because that was the first DVD set listed under BBs on-line Turkey Day sale for music/movies...it is a $200 set, so I was pleasantly surprised they had it listed for half-off.

The Kodak camera I picked up also sold out...but it has received great reviews from BB users and amazon reviewers, so I knew it was a winner (new camera replaces a 4mp camera I use for eBaying).

I have to give credit where credit is due...BBs on-line sale was great (lots of items had free shipping, and the shipping charge for items was not that bad to begin with), as it saved me from wading into the pit of misfortune that was their camera section when I went to my local store (that section was a scary mob of people).

This was the first year in three where I rolled in a half-hour after the stores open (usually I am in line around 03:30 am at the latest), and was able to pick up most everything I was interested in.

Went to Subway too. That new 'feast' sandwich, it sure is a feast...

Was going to go to Toys R Us for the Zune, ended up starting a little late, left home at 4:30, went to Fry's first for bluetooth headset, then over to Best Buy, OfficeMax was next door, not open til 7.

Got 2 SD cards, they sold out in 7 minutes!!!

Then over to Wal-Mart, GameStop, Circuit City, Staples, Target, lunch, CVS, back to Wal-Mart, back to Best Buy, back to Fry's ,back to Circuit City, back to Wal- Mart, FYE.

Finished about 5 PM.

My friend wanted the Navigon GPS at Staples, sold out. Oh well.

wow, you all are CRAZY for going out for some of your stuff lol!!

I stayed up late on the 21st to try and buy some stuff online, none of it was available. So, I woke up at 6 am on Thursday and got 90% of the items I wanted online. I got:

Best Buy
-9 packs of the 2-pack tapes for camcorders. (3.99 each)
-O.C. season 4 (14.99)
-500 GB external HD ($100)
-Guitar Hero 2 for PS2 ($25)

-C.C.
-Spysweeper (w/ after MIRB will be $2.99)
-Chris Brown CD ($6)
-new Kayne West cd ($7)
-new T.I. cd ($7)
-on Fri ordered vol 2, 3 &4 of the james bond for $19 each)
-super mario galaxy for the wii ($35)

then, on Fri, I got up at 5:30 am to stand in line at target. I got there 10 mins before they opened, BB had been opened for 45 mins, and there was STILL a massive line out the door just to get in! I ran inside of target to get my b/f his 360 wireless headset for $48 bucks. I got the last one, but managed to miss out of gears of war (ordered from amazon for the same price, free s&h). I grabbed friends ssn 3 for $15, family guy vol 2 for $20, casion royale for $10 and b/c I didn't feel like trying to stand inline forever at BB, grabbed knocked up for $10. There was ONE person in line in front of me, checkout took 5 mins. :)

I've stood outside all night the past 2 BFs for digital cameras, camcorders, flash drives and memory cards, but, luckily this year, I got everything I wanted online except for the easy target shopping experience :)

I even lucked out with going to toysrus.com and getting the GPS that was $220, a newer model than any other GPS on sale this year, and a pretty good price too! I'm happy! :D