Harry Potter Midnight Release Party

I preordered four of the Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows books for myself and Sarah's family. This allowed me to be able to pick them up at the midnight release party on the Friday, June 20th. They started giving out line tickets at 9am that morning. So, I had my mother-in-law stand in line for 1 1/2 hours to get me a line ticket for the line later that night. Standing in line to stand in line. She got me number 81. So, I arrived at the store at 11:40 pm. The whole parking lot for 8 stores was 2/3rds full! Crazy. There were nearly 1000 people in the store. I got in there and found out that my number 81 didn't mean anything. BUT, the orange band did mean I was in the first of about 5 groups. So, I waited around and got my book at about 12:30 pm. Not too bad. There were still hundreds of people waiting when I left the store. A little better than the last time. I had to wait nearly 2 hours for the last book. I can't wait to start reading.