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How was your iPad 2 Launch experience?

eddiexhart

eddiexhart

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 13, 2008
214
19
North Hollywood CA
My body decided to wake me up at 7 AM, showered, made a sandwich for my wait and I decided to leave at 9:30 AM only having to realize when I walked out to my car from my apartment, my car was GONE. MY HEART DROPPED! After a phone call to the police, they told me that my car was towed. That I parked in someone spot. MY BAD. But seriously OUCH! Anyways! I eventually made it to Los Cerritos Mall, Cerritos CA at 11 AM and was the 50th person in line. Man, I wish I owned a folding chair or remembered to bring a pillow! Through out the 6 1/2 hours, California Pizza Kitchen passed our free pizza slices and The Lazy Dog Cafe passed out some kind of amazing bread. At 4 PM, Apple employees handed out coffee, tea, and waters! So awesome! 5 PM came around and an estimated total of 200+ people in line! And man once 5:00 hit, all the Apple employees were cheering and clapping and everyone in line was cheering. Man it was SO exciting! 5:45 PM was the time I walked out with my beautiful 16 GB White WiFi iPad 2.

This was my first Apple launch waiting experience and I think it was the best!
All my family and friends thought I was crazy, but it was worth it!!

How was your guys experience?!:p:D
 
Mine was great. Sat at home, watched TV and drank beers. Wife came home with two iPad 2s.
 
TheFarmer said:
Mine was great. Sat at home, watched TV and drank beers. Wife came home with two iPad 2s.
Click to expand...
hahahaha... yeah you win. Mine was great. Sat in the mall for a few hours talking with other like-minded people talking about gadgets and having good Xoom debate topics, etc. Then snagged the exact model I wanted. In and out in like 5 mins once my turn came about which wasn't too long...
 
Wonderful. Best Buy even brought out chairs for the first 10 people in line, so we sat around playing on the "old" (ha ha) iPad while we waited. We got there at 2pm, and got our golden tickets at 4:30 -- out of store by 5:05pm.

Now it's the long wait while I restore from the original iPad... about 20gb of apps.
 
I was out of work early, figured I'd stop by the mall out of giggles to see what it was like. Line was around to the end of the mall and back. Reps said they wouldn't have enough. Ok, I stopped into Target to peek. Small line there, handing out bracelets. They said they only had white 64gb units left. Not my cup of cheese.

I drove to the local Walmart, they said they weren't selling them but the other one was. I drove to the other one, they said they got one unit in stock. I said I'd take it. This was 4:00pm. No line, no hassle, no problems.
 
It went well for me, had the 16 GB wifi white ordered at 1:08 AM. I plan to buy the screen protector in person at best buy tommorow.

Too bad waking up that early ruined my sleep for the night (I am CST).
 
Was cool. I met some cool folks. This guy gave me 2 GOOD Tickets to The New Jersey Devils and The Atlanta Thrashers game!!!! He was online with me and said he couldn't make the game, so he gave them to me. :eek::cool::cool:
 
I sold my 64GB 3G iPad at 2:30 and headed over to our local apply store immediately after. When I got there around 2:45 there were already a couple hundred people in line. There was a violinist playing chamber music, and everyone was quite pleasant. By the time 5pm rolled around there were as many people behind me in line as in front of me, but everything moved fairly quickly once the store re-opened. By 5:45 I was the pleased owner of a new 32GB black Wi-Fi iPad. I was surprised that our store in podunk western MA had so many in stock. In line I was prepping myself for disappointment, but peeking behind the counter at checkout, they still has at least 20 unopened cases.
 
Got to best buy at about 4:35, there was about 50 people in line, walked out with a 16gb white at around 5:45. Was going to get a Verizon model but found out you couldn't activate on an existing line :( I'm so over vzw
 
Left work at 4:15

Showed up at Walmart at 4:52

Received my ticket for a black iPad 32g at 4:54

Stood in line with 3 people in front of me until 5:00

Paid for the iPad at 5:05
 
Mine was fun even though I didn't get one. I was number 29 and the store I was at had about 15. I have one on order from this store and may get it next week.

I did get a cheesy pen with an Apple logo on it and a "Mac forever" t-shirt. Had fun talking to people in line.

It would have been perfect if I had gotten one but now I'll have to wait. I sold my iPad 1 to a coworker and the withdrawal symptoms are starting. :p
 
Just fine. 3 hours of movie, news and tech talk with nice strangers and then got the ipad 2, which I love so far.

Best Buy only had 20, very glad I decided to go earlier than planned.
 
Went to Target around 3:30 just to see the line. Not long but the 16gb were already reserved and they only had 64gb left. No white at all. Went to best buy in Lakewood, CA around 4:00. Only 65 people in line.

No more 16gb white tickets left by the time they got to me so I got the last black one. Left around 6:00pm. Now I'm at home typing on it. :D
 
Got to Apple Store at 11:30, expecting 1-5 people in line...Ended up seeing 50, so instead of a movie and/or lunch, I chose to stand in line. Glad I did, because there were 450+ that showed up. Line was at least 100 yards long, 4 aisles deep.

Apple peeps were great, as they served water/cookies, and constantly bantered about trying to motivate the line. They opened the store 12 minutes early, and started handing out the iPads...Got my 64GB Black 3G, and was out the door by 5:20.

Was my first launch...5 1/2 hours actually went by pretty quickly...I would definitely do it again.
 
I already posted this in another thread but ill paste it here.

you have no idea what I went through today. Resellers with notebooks and $80k in cash and $8k in apple giftcards pushing people into line cutting other people I was surrounded by people with the giftcards in elastics from the resellers. the resellers would hang around the apple employees giving out tickets and when an apple employee would say were now out of 64gb att 3g. they resellers would instruct all the people they had buying for them to go 32g now until eventually every 3g model was gone.

When I showed up I was number 30 in line but somehow by the time 5pm rolled around I was like 100 in line cause the way the mall is set up I was around a bend and I couldnt see the front of the line and apparently those people werent policing themselves. resellers stacking hundreds of ipads in the food court well people in line that really wanted one are getting turned away. Through out the day I heard them bragging that the ipads would be out of the country by monday and that they bought new cars on the iPhone launch.

Apple employees did nothing. the resellers were even joking with the employees it was absolutely absurd. Now I know why apple decided to not take cash or their own giftcards last year. The computers crashed when I bought mine and even though I ended up having to pay cash there is still a hold on my debit card and even though im disgusted by the whole situation I still really hope apple gos back to banning cash and giftcards. Cause today was ridiculous.

horrible.
 
I wasn't getting a ipad2, but My mom has been waiting for one since december. She leaves for a trip on Thursday and were not sure if she would get it before then if she ordered online, thus why we went into the store.

It was a disaster for sure. We do not live very close to a apple store, so that wasn't a option.

She got off of work at 3:30 PM. She called ahead to a Verizon store and asked if they were going to have them and they said that they were gonna be selling them. We went to the Verizon store and they said, they didn't have any in the store...they would just help us order one online from them and it would come in a couple weeks....:mad:

Why would we wait till 5PM to order when we coulda just ordered online at 12:01?!? Dumb Verizon...:confused:

It turns out we were not the only ones who were deceived by this because we went to the local target and walmart and at both stores we met people there who said Verizon screwed them as well.

The Target we went to only had 5 wifi and 5 3G. However, they only had 64GB versions+white. We went to Walmart and they had the same situation.

Hopefully we can go into town tomorrow and be around when the apple store gets shipments in.

If not she will just order online and wait a couple weeks.
 
For my first one it was really good. Got there at 10:30am. Was 33rd in line. By 4:30 there was 200+ people in line. They gave out smart waters, starbucks coffee, cookies, candy, and chips. Got my 64gb black wifi ipad 2. Only bad part was some idiot father with his kid tried to act like they were with me to cut the line. I told the Apple employee hell no he wasn't and he got sent to the back of the line. But I connected my iPhone to computer for internet and worked on stuff for work.
 
My experience was great. Showed up at my mall (Crabtree Valley in Raleigh) sometime around 3:30 in the afternoon. Sat in line and read a book for a while, chilled out talking to folks. I was maybe 150-200 back in line. After the store opened, they handed out tickets, but not for specific devices. I got into the store a bit after 6:30 and it took me about 10 minutes to buy. I got exactly what I wanted, a 16 GB Black AT&T 3G model, and from the piles of stock left, a few hundred more people would get what they wanted as well. Easy as pie. A bit longer than pie, but still easy....

There was one guy who tried to "merge" into our line about 3 people ahead of me while the line was moving. I just yelled at him really loudly that he must have been mistaken, the back of the line was waaaaay over there, and then I helpfully lifted the rope and pointed it out for him. Many people thanked me for that one.
 
Man, some of you had it rough...

I got off work at 3:05 and drove down the road to the Best Buy near my job. I was the 5th person in line. When I walked up I asked the 4 people waiting, "Is this is?" They gave me a grin and shrugged, "Yeah, I guess so." I waiting another hour for the BB associates to hand out the golden tickets then walked into the store and played Marvel vs. Capcom 3 on one of the display Xbox 360's for an hour until it was time to pick up the iPad for my lovely girlfriend.

My store had 20 units, 5 of each of the wifi versions. My girlfriend wanted a 16GB black one and I got the second to last of those (thank goodness some people wanted white iPads)

I've never had a launch day for any product run so smoothly. My Love is happily tapping away on her iPad as we speak. I guess I was just luck. I can't believe some people had to wait in lines for so long.
 
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