Our Black Friday experience
by Arthur
Posted on Thursday, November 27th, 2008 at 10:13 pm CET
Today was Black Friday and many stores were open very early with special sales. Some even as early as 4 o’clock! When we got up at 5:00 we turned on the news and they were already showing helicopter views of huge lines of people in front of stores and malls. Roads around big malls like Woodfield and Gurnee Mills were already jammed. Some Best Buy’s in the Chicagoland area had people camping out in front of their doors from 3pm in the afternoon the day before! Big stores like Best Buy and Target often have so-called ‘doorbusters’, which are things like laptops and big TV’s that are very cheap but they only have a few in each store. So people want to be the first in and grab these things.
We decided to go to our nearest Kohl’s, which had already opened at 4:00 (!) but we arrived at around 6:30. The parking lot was almost full but there were still some places. When we entered the store there were two HUGE lines at the register that went around the entire perimeter of the store. People were dragging huge plastic bags full of stuff behind them as the lines crept forward. There were still a lot of really great sales available. Kohl’s had hundreds of products on the ‘early bird’ sale, which ran until noon. We picked out some things and got in the long line. It went pretty quickly and only took about 30 minutes until we reached the cashier. In front of us was a party of three women who had only one small bag between them when we got in line, but two of them kept running away to get more stuff and by the end they were dragging several huge bags full of stuff behind them.
When we left Kohl’s the parking lot was completely packed and we made someone very happy with our Kohl’s shopping bag and parking space. We got out at about 8:00 and then headed to Hawthorn Mall in Vernon Hills. It wasn’t so crowded there. We figured most people were still in the big box stores like Wal Mart, Target and Best Buy. Many of the stores in the mall didn’t even have a sale. Some did though. The Disney Store, for instance, had 20% off everything until 10:00.
After the mall our final stop was Target. It was around 10:30am at this time and it was still very crowded (they had opened at 6:00). A lot of the doorbuster display cases were empty. Especially the cheap DVD’s and Blu-Rays were wiped out.
This was my first Black Friday and it was a lot of fun to see all the frantic shoppers. We got some very good deals! 🙂
Today was Black Friday and many stores were open very early with special sales. Some even as early as 4 o’clock! When we got up at 5:00 we turned on the news and they were already showing helicopter views of huge lines of people in front of stores and malls. Roads around big malls like Woodfield and Gurnee Mills were already jammed. Some Best Buy’s in the Chicagoland area had people camping out in front of their doors from 3pm in the afternoon the day before! Big stores like Best Buy and Target often have so-called ‘doorbusters’, which are things like laptops and big TV’s that are very cheap but they only have a few in each store. So people want to be the first in and grab these things.
We decided to go to our nearest Kohl’s, which had already opened at 4:00 (!) but we arrived at around 6:30. The parking lot was almost full but there were still some places. When we entered the store there were two HUGE lines at the register that went around the entire perimeter of the store. People were dragging huge plastic bags full of stuff behind them as the lines crept forward. There were still a lot of really great sales available. Kohl’s had hundreds of products on the ‘early bird’ sale, which ran until noon. We picked out some things and got in the long line. It went pretty quickly and only took about 30 minutes until we reached the cashier. In front of us was a party of three women who had only one small bag between them when we got in line, but two of them kept running away to get more stuff and by the end they were dragging several huge bags full of stuff behind them.
When we left Kohl’s the parking lot was completely packed and we made someone very happy with our Kohl’s shopping bag and parking space. We got out at about 8:00 and then headed to Hawthorn Mall in Vernon Hills. It wasn’t so crowded there. We figured most people were still in the big box stores like Wal Mart, Target and Best Buy. Many of the stores in the mall didn’t even have a sale. Some did though. The Disney Store, for instance, had 20% off everything until 10:00.
After the mall our final stop was Target. It was around 10:30am at this time and it was still very crowded (they had opened at 6:00). A lot of the doorbuster display cases were empty. Especially the cheap DVD’s and Blu-Rays were wiped out.
This was my first Black Friday and it was a lot of fun to see all the frantic shoppers. We got some very good deals! 🙂