{"id":3225,"date":"2016-11-25T21:27:23","date_gmt":"2016-11-26T02:27:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fiveforks.com\/ted\/?p=3225"},"modified":"2016-11-25T21:41:49","modified_gmt":"2016-11-26T02:41:49","slug":"door-busting","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/2016\/11\/door-busting\/","title":{"rendered":"Door Busting"},"content":{"rendered":"

I don’t think I’ve ever lined up outside a store on Black Friday to be the first to get some amazing deal, called door busters, but I certainly don’t mind going a little later in the day. I used to go to Best Buy all the time, but I realize it was mostly just to get cheap DVD’s. Most of the DVD’s I own were less than $10. I don’t know that many people even buy DVD’s anymore and I haven’t been to Best Buy in a while. But this year I did a membership with Disney Movie Club and that got me shopping for movies again, this time for Blu-ray DVD’s which are in HD (DVD’s actually have pretty poor resolution at 480p, whereas a Blu-ray is 1080p). The Disney thing has worked out pretty well and I have collected points from those purchase and gotten a couple of free movies at Disney Movie Rewards. In the past week or so they offered a $5 off coupon that could be used in stores for only 250 points. 100 points is worth about a dollar, so that’s a good deal. I planned to combine the coupon with a Black Friday deal (or two) to get Zootopia<\/em> and\/or Finding Dory<\/em> for pretty cheap. The Black Friday ads were published weeks ago, so I knew I could get Dory<\/em> at Target for $10 and Zootopia<\/em> at Best Buy for $8 (before the coupon). Would I be able to get both? I figured I would purchase one coupon and that way if Target or Best Buy ran out, I wouldn’t be stuck with a coupon that expires at the end of the year. But since Target and Best Buy are across the highway from each other and I didn’t want to make two trips just to save 250 points, I ultimately bought another coupon and headed to Target, not on Black Friday, but Thanksgiving night, albeit still a few hours after the doors had opened.
\n<\/p>\n

Target was bustling, but not insane, with lots of people with full carts going out to their cars. I walked in and past some of the checkout lines where they usually have DVD’s and Finding Dory<\/em> was gone. I made it back to where they had put DVD’s for Black Friday and found a whole shelf of Dory<\/em> Blu-rays. Disney is great because in addition to the Blu-ray disk, they usually also include a DVD, and a code that you can use to download a digital version of the movie (and get more points!). One woman was on her knees poring over all the DVD’s, but all I wanted was Dory<\/em> (which I haven’t seen yet, unlike Zootopia<\/em>). I went to the self checkout line which had open registers, but a Target employee said that in order to speed things up, the employees were checking people out, so she took care of it, including scanning the coupon. I was in and out of Target in probably 10 minutes.<\/p>\n

I drove over to Best Buy hoping for a similar experience. There were four police cars out front and lots of people wandering around. When I got inside, there were lines wrapped around all over. People were waiting in a long line just to get iPhones. I found the DVD’s and was able to eventually locate Zootopia<\/em>, but the checkout line was probably 50 people deep. I kept looking because I knew Best Buy had some pretty good deals on other movies and picked up The Hateful Eight<\/em> for $3.99 and although I had The Princess Bride<\/em> already, I didn’t have it on Blu-ray and it was only $3.99 and included a digital download (most Blu-rays include a download, some people buy the disk and sell the code for the download to people who don’t care about owning disks). Another $3.99 choice that had gotten good reviews, but that I had never seen was Ex Machina<\/em>, so I picked that one up. I had also heard some good things about Gone Girl<\/em> and it seemed like a pretty good deal at $5.99 so I got that and also The Imitation Game<\/em>, which I had wanted to see but could never get at Red Box, so I paid $5.99 for it too. Then I stood in line for a while behind a guy who was buying five Go Phones and his friend who was buying three more. I talked to him some and he said you couldn’t go wrong with a smart phone for $30 that you could unlock and use on any network. The line probably took 20 minutes to a half hour, which was almost too long for me to stay, but it moved fairly quickly and they took my $5 off coupon no problem. <\/p>\n

So lots of movies to watch and hopefully they will be worth watching again so I can get my money’s worth. Later on I was checking on a discussion area and found out that Target had some previously unadvertised deals on movies, including Gone Girl<\/em> for only $4 (I paid $6 at Best Buy by not crawling around on my knees at Target to check everything out like I should have). Also I had shopped at Target earlier in the week to take advantage of a pre Black Friday sale and gotten The Grand Budapest Hotel<\/em> for $6, but now it was only $4, which is an amazing deal on a great movie (I had seen it before, but watched some of it on the train, using my digital download; it is still great). On that earlier shopping trip I had also picked up a season of Modern Family<\/em> on DVD for only $5 so that I could rip the episodes and watch them on the train. I had great luck using Handbrake, watching the pilot episode on Wednesday on the way to work. I decided maybe it would be good to get more seasons at this great rate and wound up buying three more seasons online from Target with free shipping. I also threw in a second season of Homeland<\/em> for $5. I had bought the first season on used Blu-ray earlier in the week from Amazon for about the same price. I have never seen an episode, so hopefully it will be good. Plus, I had bought a box set of the entire series of The Sopranos<\/em> on Blu-ray plus digital downloads for $70, kind of a birthday present to myself, but again having never watched a single episode, only knowing it by its very substantial reputation as one of the greatest TV shows of all time.<\/p>\n

Now I really<\/em> have a lot of watching to do. I’ll write more about how the digital downloads work out later on because it is kind of an interesting thing. I will say that I didn’t go completely crazy on all of this. On the same day that The Sopranos<\/em> went on sale, you could also buy the complete series of The Wire<\/em>, which is also critically acclaimed, but I passed. Also, I had thought about getting Gravity<\/em>, Spotlight<\/em>, and The Lego Movie<\/em>, all of which I had enjoyed, but ultimately decided against. I also declined a few movies I still want to see, but might make better rentals: Sicario<\/em>, Straight Outta Compton<\/em>, and Despicable Me<\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I don’t think I’ve ever lined up outside a store on Black Friday to be the first to get some amazing deal, called door busters, but I certainly don’t mind going a little later in the day. I used to go to Best Buy all the time, but I realize it was mostly just to … Continue reading “Door Busting”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3225","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3225","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3225"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3225\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3229,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3225\/revisions\/3229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3225"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3225"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fiveforks.com\/ted\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3225"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}