I was in the same boat as all of you...getting extremely pissed off so after an hour and a half trying with apple I tried out AT&T again and it went very smoothly. Honestly if it doesn't come to my house on the 24th I will be okay with that considering the activation is going to be ridiculous.
If like a couple of you have said they will be sold out online already that would have to be a record for number of phones sold in 2 hours unless they didn't have a whole lot to offer to begin with, who knows. Good luck with the pre-ordering!