What sort of madness drives one to participate in Black Friday? Save for a couple specials this year, there really weren't that many great deals to be had. In fact, some of the best specials (from a percentage off standpoint) came in lesser sought after items like DVDs and appliances. Add to that fact that many of the specials were available online instead of heading to the store, and the craziness that is Black Friday becomes a bit of a head-scratcher. That said, I was more than willing to participate this year and in the end came away with an experience that was much more fun than hitting F5 (refresh) on websites all night while waiting for their specials to appear.

The first and most important step to a successful Black Friday shopping experience is preparation. You have to know what stores have the specials, what their policies are, and how good those specials really are. Since I was planning to visit a few stores, my plan centered around which store was most important to be at first and which ones I could visit later in the morning without missing any deals. Since I was only in the market for some movies and a Blu-Ray player, my plan focused on camping out where the best deal for Blu-Ray players was. In my case, that was Ultimate Electronics. But it wasn't just about what the store had, it was also about the location of the store. The Ultimate Electronics store I decided upon was located within a mile of Target, Wal-Mart, and Best Buy (aka the holy trinity of electronic goods). Coupled with the fact that Wal-Mart price matches Black Friday specials (possibly the greatest policy that nobody talks about), my hope was to get all of the sales items at Wal-Mart anyway, but the others would be located close by just in case. The icing on the cake for me? Ultimate Electronics is located on a side street that doesn't get a lot of traffic, so I was pretty sure that there wouldn't be a huge crowd as there would be with the other locations.

My plan was to be near the first in line, so I arrived at the store at 9:30 PM on Thanksgiving night and was relieved to see that nobody had beaten me there. Armed with a book and a dosage of 5-hour Energy I was prepared and ready to make it through the night. To my surprise it would be nearly 40 more minutes before I would see another person, and even then they didn't stick around to wait. In fact, the driver and passenger (Deidra and Torie, respectively) asked if I would give them a call once the line hit 10 people deep. I obliged since it was nice to have a responsibility with nothing else going on. As a bonus, Torie promised to bring me a plate of Thanksgiving food. Score! A half hour later and a couple more people (Tina and Mario) finally arrived and decided to stick around. As they unloaded their reclining chairs and blankets it dawned on me that I had really under-prepared as far as my comfort was concerned. Sure I had a book, but unless I was willing to burn it I was in for a bit of a chill the rest of the evening.

By midnight there were only a couple more people in line and it became apparent that I had made a great decision on store location, but probably could have arrived much later (although where's the fun in that?). Around that time Torie and Deidra finally came back and delivered the biggest Thanksgiving feast that I've had in years (seriously, there was even a full plate of dessert items). I didn't even have to follow through on my responsibility of calling them, since at that time there still weren't 10 people in line, and there wouldn't be for at least a few more hours. Sometime after that I convinced my friend Sylvia to come out and buy a TV (what are friends for if not to convince each other to spend money?), and then someone brought out a game called Dirty Minds. You can probably imagine what the game may be about (or can Google it if you don't know), but it's truly a game that can only be fully appreciated with a group of strangers at 3:00 AM in the morning.

As that magic hour neared, 5:00 AM, the energy seemed to grow in the small crowd that we had amassed. About an hour before the store opened the General Manager came out and greeted us, and was nice enough to answer all the questions we had about the specials (including how many of each item they had). Unfortunately for Torie, she discovered at this point that she had been duped. She had staked out the store a couple days previous when the TV she was in the market for was on sale for $688 (a 50" 720p TV) and at the time one of the managers told her that they'd have the same model in 1080p on sale for $699 on Black Friday. All that was fine and dandy, except the "special" on Black Friday was still for the 720p. That's right, the special for Black Friday was actually higher than what it had been earlier that week; which, by the way, is an all-too-common issue with "sale" items on Black Friday (seriously, I was amazed how many bad specials there were like this at many stores this year). Luckily for her, I was later informed that the store gave her a good deal on another TV and other items to make up for their misinformation.

Once the doors opened, I strolled to the items on my list, carried them to the register, and was in and out of the store in less than 20 minutes. In all, the organization of Ultimate Electronics was ideal, although it probably helped that there wasn't a huge crowd waiting either (compared to other major retail outlets at least). A quick swing by Wal-Mart proved to be much different. I'm pretty sure that even Moses would have had a heck of a time parting the crowd that was in there. What's worse, most of the doorbuster specials were mismarked as the regular retail rate instead of the doorbuster pricing. On top of that, many of the items weren't located where they were supposed to be according to Wal-Mart's much publicized "map" of their individual stores. Those mistakes probably assisted me in obtaining a couple items that I may not have been able to otherwise, so I really can't complain. When I finally did get to the front of the check-out line I was able to price match the other stores' specials without any issue. It was actually a bit of a surprise that they didn't verify the price-matched advertisements, but they were probably just trying to check everyone out as fast as they could.

In all, my Black Friday shopping experience was a complete success. Not necessarily because I wound up with a few items on my shopping list, but because of the camaraderie that you feel with the people in the crowd around you. I would have hated to be one of the people that had "must-have" items on their list, since dealing with large crowds is stressful enough without having to worry about if someone is going to get the last Zhu Zhu pet in front of you. And for the people that were disappointed because they didn't get the hot items because they arrived too late? Plan ahead next time, camp out with us, and bring a blanket. And if you want someone to call you once the line starts getting long, it doesn't hurt to bribe them with pecan pie.