Shanghai’s first Apple Store just opened today in Lujiazui, right across the street from the Oriental Pearl Tower and Super Brand Mall. I waited in line like an Apple fanboy with Joe from 6:30 am until doors opened at 10:00 am. Roughly 300 people ahead of me when I arrived. Not sure how many by the time doors opened, but I guesstimate around a thousand (based on what I could see from my spot).
At about 7:30 am it started to rain. (See pics below.) Fortunately the Apple staff was prepared for this and brought out a bunch of black umbrellas with Apple’s logo on them. Unfortunately everybody thought the umbrellas were being given away as free souvenirs and some people got rowdy while trying to get one. The rain only lasted about 15 minutes, and the staff collected all the umbrellas sometime later.
A few minutes before doors opened, somebody cut in line at around the 400th spot, which got a few people quite upset and he was forced out. You can see in the video that it got a little violent.
Aside from that incident, and people grappling for umbrellas, the event remained cheerful overall with the staff all high on caffeine and endlessly going “woooooo!!!”
And I got a free tshirt. Woooooo!!!
nice pics! I will see if I have time to go there when I go to Shanghai in a few days. A friend has warned me not to wear a skirt when I go. Something about the stairs.… not sure what she means but I will know when I go there.
Hey Aline. The stairs were translucent (see here), but I was there a couple days ago and they’ve covered the stairs with carpet. Everything around is still glass though.