Many local shoppers started Black Friday waiting in lines for the best deals, but found big crowds competing for limited deals.
Lines were incredibly long at many stores like target, Best Buy and Walmart. As usual, those rock-bottom deals went way too fast.
Huddled together to handle the shopping madness, employees at Best Buy geared up for the midnight stampede.
Strategy is key to getting what you want, and based on the number of people waiting in line this year, more shoppers were standing around earlier, competing for top deals.
Expert planners say they picked a few stores with biggest savings then, mapped out where the item was located and headed for the checkout line.
"I really liked the deals at Costco because you can return there really easily and they had some great coupons on pajamas and stuff," shopper Christie Rosenbaum said.
Unfortunately, the checkout lines at Kohl's looked more like an LA traffic jam, complete with signs letting shoppers how much longer they had in line.
"We got most of the things we wanted for like 50 to 60 percent off and so it was really good. Christmas gifts? No just for myself. Yeah, we always buy for ourselves too," shopper Patricia Elisalde said.
Even though lines wrapped around the store, for shoppers who were multiplying savings with coupons the wait was worth it.
"I got this memory foam for my son, it's a mattress cover and was on sale for 49.99, but then I had a 10 dollar off coupon and an additional 15 percent off that, plus I got Kohl's cash, on top of that," shopper Cricket Koch said.
At Sports Authority, Antonio Bryson raced through aisles to get deals on paintball supplies and stocked up for a whole year of messy fun!
"I saved over $150. It's just rough math though, I've been up all night long," he said.
Many of these die hard shoppers said they never slept last night and quite a few were still going this afternoon.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tommy Tran and Carlos Saucedo also contributed to this report.
