Justs a heads up, every year, there are a hand full of lucky customer that gets their new iPhone a day or two before the official release date. The OP could be the chosen one ;-)
True story about my pre order:
At 12:02 I had three devices all trying to connect; My Mac(WiFi), iPad(WiFi), and iPhone(LTE not WiFi).
The iPad on Wifi was not connecting to the Apple App Store, neither was the Mac browser. I had started refreshing both since like 11:59.
Now after a couple min like at 12:02 they weren't connecting, so i tried to desperately use my iPhone on LTE.
This part is key: I hadn't opened my iPhone Apple Store App since I had ordered something else a few days ago and it had already been in my checkout bag. So for some reason, when I opened it for the first time in a few days, it was already connected to the store and the bottom menu. I was able to push buttons, and I was able to touch the "pre-order" link button instead of being on the "we have something in store for you" screen. I put everything in my cart and I went to go push the Apple Pay button. But at that point at like 12:03, the button froze. I got kicked out and the store went down on all three devices again.
At this point I came on here and saw a bunch of people saying the store is down. After another eight minutes I finally got in to the store on my iPad and saw it the phone from earlier in my cart and the Apple Pay button finally worked. My email said 12:11.
But secretly... I think I got into some backdoor cache to the app so I was like in a parallel universe for the first 2 min where I got in but it wasn't normal to get in. Minutes AFTER that, the very first few people started posting that they completed orders.
So perhaps the batch I initially reserved in that ghost zone in the store is probably what kept my place in line.
So even though I finished around 12:10, I think I got in line at like 12:03 by saving it to my cart and got locked into a super early batch. At a moment when a majority of people weren't even able to connect yet if they were mass refreshing.
Around the time when I got in on LTE with the cached app, I couldn't get in with anything else so I know it was lucky how I got in like that so early.
So my card actually got charged sometime early in the morning/middle of the night, faster than anyone I've seen mention. Whilst I noticed some other specific people who had their order placed before me and didn't get a card charged till later than me. This leads me to believe I am one of the earliest batches in line.
9/15 delivery here I come!