Apple Store Opening at MacArther Mall Norfolk, VA

This past Saturday I had the chance to go to the opening of the MacArthur mall Apple store in Norfolk, Virginia. This is a recap (with pictures!) of my experiences at this exciting event.

First, let me say, that if you have never been to the opening of an Apple store you are missing something that every Mac-freak should witness. [Note to readers: if you’re single, it isn’t the best place to go to pick up women.]

Yes, gathered together in one long, fairly orderly line, hundreds of faithful Mac users came to witness the opening of yet another official Apple store. There were laptops and iPods aplenty with many attendees (myself included) sporting festive Apple-themed shirts. It was quite a site. In fact, you could quite easily tell the “normal” people from those who were Mac nuts. The normal people didn’t have that special gleam in their eyes.

But back to the main event. The store opened at 10:00 a.m., however I arrived there at 9:15 a.m. and was able to snag a place in line about 100 people deep. By the time the gates opened I estimated there were close to 700 people in line with more than a 1,000 visiting the store before lunch. Clearly this wasn’t as crowded as a store opening in New York but there were, none the less, considerably more people than I had thought would show.

Overall the day was quite enjoyable and I must commend the staff of this new store for being both courteous and entertaining. For instance, while standing in line a dozen or so staff members would march down the entire line chanting slogans and shaking hands. One would almost think we were at a pep rally and not the opening of a computer store.

Eventually they flung open the gates and watched as we all went streaming inward, basking in the bright glow of the monitors. And, as gifts for coming to the grand opening the first 1,000 people got very nice Apple T-shirts.

All in all I had a very fun time standing in line, talking to people and seeing the sights. Like I said before, you can’t call yourself a true Mac zealot until you have made a pilgrimage to an Apple store grand opening.

For those of you who might be interested here are some pictures of the event.

Apple Store Babes

Geoff, a good friend and major Mac Geek

A long shot of the line