OotP line stories

[Kristin]

I want to hear about your release parties, waiting for the book, etc. :) Does anybody have any interesting stories? What was it like where you were?

I was away from my hometown on The Day because a friend was getting married. Luckily, he and his now-wife are HP fans. So the plan was for a whole bunch of us to get the book after the rehearsal dinner.

Well, you had to check in on the reserve list and get a "line ticket" that showed you your place in line. A few of us got there before our friend, so we decided to check in. The woman checking couldn't find our names anywhere on the list. She found our friend's name and said he had reserved one copy. I started freaking out! :eek: :eek: What do you mean I don't have a copy reserved?!?! We called our friend on his cell phone so we could find out how he had reserved the books. He said he reserved all 7 copies under his name. Well, it turns out the stupid woman ignored the "Quantity reserved" column. So that got straightened out.

Then the stupid line tickets. :rolleyes: We showed up a bit after 10 and got #332! (When I got GoF, I didn't arrive nearly as early and I was somewhere around #20!) Then they wanted everybody to get in line in number order. But nobody could figure out where the line ended or where it went. People ended up standing in clumps and joining the line when they thought it *might* be around time for them to get in line. Some people with high numbers got theirs earlier than those with low numbers.

It was a mess! (Of course, I know people who picked up the book at Wal-Mart or the grocery store with considerably less hassle, but considerably less fanfare and excitement.)

We got our books and that's all that matters.

[Colli]

:wave: I was one of those people at Wal-mart with no hassle and no fanfare. ;)

My brother was in town for my birthday (the 20th) and so he decided to go with me, we left around 11:15 (even though Wal-mart's only 10 minutes away) and there wasn't too bad of a line. Since I didn't want to be SEEN in line ;), we walked around the store a good bit. At ten till midnight, we got in line, there were probably 30 people in front of us.

So the line started moving and people were walking towards the front of the store with the book in their arms, and I was freaking out. My brother was making fun of me. ;) Anyway, I got to the front and some guy with a black lightning bolt pasted to his forehead and a cape on handed me the book, and I SQUEALED "Thank you!" and some idiot from the newspaper took my picture and we went to check out. And it only cost me 16.99, which was awesome.

I read all the way home and then until 5:30 that morning, when my dad woke up and I hastily turned off my light. ;) Then I got up at 8 to go to Dayton to see Phantom of the Opera. :)

[Moxie]

Originally posted by Kristin
It was a mess! (Of course, I know people who picked up the book at Wal-Mart or the grocery store with considerably less hassle, but considerably less fanfare and excitement.)
We got our books and that's all that matters.

Yeah, one of my gaming buddies and I spent much more time in line than the other friend who hadn't reserved a copy & headed over to Walmart (which in our area hadn't taken book reservations, or even advertised it would be open at midnight), but I think we had more fun in our long line discussing the first four books, planning a fake Death Eater raid to scare away all the people ahead of us ;) (no, we didn't actually try out our plan), picking up freebies along the way from fully-costumed bookstore employees who looked like they were having as much fun as the rest of us (final count: 2 pairs plastic glasses, 1 lightning-bolt temporary tattoo, 1 large sticker with the book title, and a really cheesy-looking fake wand), complaining that the in-store Starbucks didn't sell butterbeer :o ...the really cool thing about The Line (this one and the GoF Line I also waited in) was that everyone's kind of instant friends, anyone could turn to a total stranger and immediately strike up a conversation about something like how many students are actually in Hogwarts (That topic, like the faux Death Eater plotting, actually happened between us and the family in front of us in line. Those little kids sounded way too eager to use my flashlight to simulate a Dark Mark... :eek::D) or holler "Page Count?" to some lucky bum exiting the store and get a gleeful "870!" back to which everyone grins like idiots and jumps up and down. :D

The friend who waited along with me sent an email after she was done reading, thanking me for talking her into going to the bookstore at midnight this time :) She doesn't participate in any HP boards (yet...) so The Line was her first experience of a mass gathering of HP fans, as it was for a lot of people I suspect. I'm hoping we can get even more of our gaming group in line in a few years whe Book 6 comes out :cool:

[Kristin]

I had a great time in the GoF line and made friends with other HP fans. But that time, the line was almost all adults. There were maybe 5 kids in the whole store. But for OotP it was crazy with kids, really young, obnoxious kids.


Oh, and it really made me mad when people who got the book early on walked to the back of the line to gloat. I could handle the wait. I wasn't that impatient, and I didn't care that other people got before I did. But what an immature, obnoxious thing to do! :mad:

[t3h Qster]

I dressed as a dementor and strode around a book store......my reward for doing so?

a free potter gift set!!! all 5 books :)

[jesuisalleeaujardin]

you got all 5 books for free?!:jawdrop: :jawdrop: :jawdrop: i'm jealous!

my sister and i went for opening day at the border's downtown. it was fun _ not as crowded as i thought it would be. my sister was close to tears, we were hovering hear the corners where we knew they were distributing books, waiting for our number to be called... turning away when people walked by with their books... listening to random CDs... i dunno why we didn't reserve any books... but we were unceremoniously given lottery tickets and made to wait! :(... ah, it was an experience.

the book distribution was interestingly fast _ they started with people with purple bookmarks... color-coded yanno... and then 2 hours later, they started announcing "those who have red tickets between the numbers of 260-275! please proceed to the basement. ..." our numbers were 260, 269 and 270! from the third floor down i rushed, causing people to go "geez!" and yells followed me some, but i didn't care... i wasn't really gung-ho about getting the book because i prayed there would be more left even after this night... we were the last batch to be called... but i was after

:cool: the thrill of running down three sets of escalator flights!!! :cool:

hahaha... shallow silly, hahaha... but i mean, c'mon, how often does it happen that you could do that and be justified?! :D

it was hecka fun... i walked from my work building downtown to the bookstore some mile and a half away, a fun walk _ it was a friday night and it seemed more alive than usual... i got to the store and saw people in costume... was at the bookstore for about four hours... made our own wands, got HP stickers... will post some pix soon... it was great to browse books and CDs _ we got the CDs we were meaning to get... and since i let my sister get dibs on reading the book first, i had to find leverage and so i bought myself... umm... RA salvatore's rendition of... um... star wars: attack of the clones :o . ...

we gotz HP V for over 40% off or so _ $19.99 or something like that with tax _ extremely good deal, when i saw this book being sold as much as $10 more elsewhere :clap:

jardin

[Fleurdelacour]

I was going to go to Europes Biggest HP Party in Waterstones, but I had to go to a School Leaver's Party... It was at my friends house, and she lives in east London so I stayed the night. And she ordered her book from Amazon, so she opened it, and voila, the book was there. She decided to go through each chapter, and read out the names of each chapter, by the time she started this, I had barricared myself in her bathroom ;)

I finally made my way home, and stopped in Ottkars in Greenwich, I did expect tourists. I got tourists... They all looked so excited, a little Australian boy said to his mother "Wow Mum this is so exciting! I'm gettting the book where the book is set!" bless! There were hundereds of books, and all the staff had dressed up (poorley ;) ) as Harry, Dumbledore, and the girls donned curly wigs for Hermione. Grown men were hugging their copy! And teenage girls about my age were squealing, it was quite fun :)

The queue wasn't that long considering it was the biggest bookshop, in a tourist infested place in London, on a Saturday... But they'd (the staff) had stuck "£5 OFF!" stickers on the books... Wasn't pleased at that... Bit miffed... And I read the first few chapters of OotP on the bus home, which I hate doing... Some bloke who looked like Mundungous Fletcher kept on asking me questions like: "ooh is that de new 'arry potta book?" "ooh, ave you read de rest of em?" "can I ave a read pwetty girl?"

I hate drunks...

But next time! I'm making sure I get to a bookshop AT MIDNIGHT!!! :p :rolleyes: I envy all of you who mangaged to get there

[Cedric]

My experience was most similar to Jardin's, probably because I went to a border's store, though this one is only one level... Anyway, we rented "The Pianist" and some other movies that night, so by the time it was about 11 I got off the computer, probably playing some games, and starting watching the movie... By the time it was about 11:10 I started asking, in the annoying way that I can, if it was going to be over soon, everyone kept saying yes but that wasn't all that true. It was about 11:40-11:50 by the time we got out of the house, and the border's is about 20 minutes away, so I knew the line wouldn't be very short. When we got to the store, which is in a kind of strip mall, I was saying to myself (by the way, the border's is in the middle of about 3 or 4 other stores) "is that store open at this time of night???", I asked this because there were still people outside. I soon realized that this wasn't a group of people shopping at that store, but waiting in the line to get their book.

Now, this store I'm talking about is around 4 stores away from border's... So my sister was saying that this was just a waste of time (she's a fan too), and that we should just come back in the morning. I prosisted to stay because I knew it would be worth it in the end.

I'll tell you now that the line was huge, 5, 6 hundred at least. So we waited... And waited.... Word got around that they were filling the building to fire capacity then letting more people in... the problem was, the people who were let in were milling around the store for a stupid amount of time, which made people like me wait even longer. The thing I noticed, as I've read a lot of other people have, is that the lines of GoF and this one are sooooooooooo different... I got to the same store last time at about 11:45 and everyone was safely in the store, not a single person waiting outside.

They finally worked out the system (also passing out those tickets, giving me a number), and things started going a little smoother. I did finally get the book. By the time we got back to the car, it was two in the morning.

Oh well.

-Cedric

[alqua]

I was in London, so I just went to the bookshop that was nearest to my hotel (I know there was a bigger release party at Piccadilly Circus, but I didn't really like the thought of going that far by myself in the middle of the night in a city I didn't know so well, so I just settled for the nearest bookshop).

They already had their doors open by the time I arrived, which was a little over 11, and there weren't many people in there. We were allowd to pick the book as soon as we entered and even start reading it, just as long as we wouldn't buy it before the midnight. :D

[jesuisalleeaujardin]

just real quick... coz i needta jet... here are the pix i promised... not very good i'm afraid :D :o

the sticker they gave away _

http://www.angelfire.com/emo/lanaw4/images/pottersticker.jpg

here are the wands we made while waiting for our turn at the book... hahaha... the small, red rectangle on the top right is the lottery ticket i said was "unceremoniously" given us... took us about 4 hours to get our book... border's is used to maniac book releases, i think :). ...

http://www.angelfire.com/emo/lanaw4/images/feathers.jpg

jardin

[Kristin]

I was telling a friend of mine about my line experiences. She said she always waits for them to come out in paperback. (She's a fan, but not hugely so.) But she said she's going to take her daughter (who is 5 now) to the midnight release for the next book. She thinks it's important that her daughter experience it, to be a part of it and to be able to say "I was there."

I thought that was interesting.

I completely agree. I think everyone should be part of anticipatory hype at some point in their lives. :) I've stood in midnight lines for GoF and OotP. And I camped in line for Star Wars Episode I (which was a fabulous experience even if the movie didn't quite live up to expectations).