Cheers Justin! An excellent blog!

It sounds like you have captured the flavor of the event perfectly. In MN it was a bunch of HALO junkies who were "too tough" to wear coats (Myself included) freezing out @$$es off. But acquisition of the game filled us with the warmth from within... That and of course the Heater cranking at 100% on the way home. It was about 40 Degrees here :)

It was funny; as I was there by myself it was kind of an awkward silence throughout the various clicks of friends. But the cold makes friends of us all and before long we are sharing stories of our favorite frags (Kills) online and our theories of what will become of the Master Chief.

At midnight the gates to our Avalon opened and the warm florescent light of GAMESTOP flooded upon us. The conversations stopped. we licked our chops with baited anticipation of the wars on the horizon.

One by one we were separated into two groups, those who have paid and those who were stuck in the slow line. It was minutes before our cherished trophy was in our hands and we were on our way home.

"Master Chief is that you?"

"Affirmative sir"

"What are you doing on there?"

"Finishing the fight sir..."

::CAUTION: SPOILER ALERT::

After having essentially ignored most of the Halo 3 hype for the past
several months, and successfully holding off until this past summer to
finally acquire Xbox 360 (a birthday gift from my girlfriend), i decided
at shortly after 11pm last night – on a whim – that i would go stand on line
at the local toys 'r' us at midnight to see if i could get meself a copy
of Halo 3, without having bothered to pre-order it. my girlfriend was
supposed to meet up with me later in the night, so i called her and
asked if she would come along with me to stand in the queue. she came by
my house around 11.30, and i jumped in her car to make the trip quicker.
upon arriving at toys 'r' us a few minutes later, i was surprised to see
that there was no line, and realised that i had only assumed they would
be participating in the midnight Halo 3 sale. so, this time with me
behind the wheel, we zipped down the road to the local game store, where
sure enough there was a line already forming. it was pretty much the
same as you describe, teenagers (mostly male) of various physical
dimensions side by side with older folks (some parents, most not).
skaters rolled back and forth along the line.
the guy standing behind us in line had brought his rottweiler puppy,
which he said was his wife's way of ensuring that he was indeed going
out to buy a video game and not going on a secret date.
as we got closer to the door, which took under an hour, i started asking
around if people knew whether this line was strictly for pre-orders.
some said they weren't sure, some said they thought it was.
however, bt the time we got up there, i decided to ask people who
actually worked there, and found that it really didn't matter by this
point, everyone was getting a copy if they wanted one.
i bought the game and an extra controller so my girl can play with me,
and we went home.
i spent the first few hours after i woke up this morning playing, and it
was certainly enjoyable enough. when i brought Halo 2 home for the first time, i
finished the game in under 8 hours on 'easy' so i opted for normal mode
this time around. just as i was confused by some of the differences in the controller functions between Halo and Halo 2, at first i found myself often hitting the wrong buttons at various points throughout gameplay, resulting in some messy deaths, but once i got the hang of the new controls, i was on a convenant killing spree.
my first impressions?
visually phenomenal, as expected, familiar controls with some new good stuff thrown in, though as with Halo 2, the alterations in certain weapons confounds me. i eventually was able to comprehend why the pistol's beautiful site function was deleted in deference to the Halo 2 battle rifle, but with the triumphant return of the assault rifle in Halo 3, i would have liked to be able to zoom in with the pistol once more. not being able to double-fist with the needler was another disappointment, but i will have to make due with the new spikers in each hand.
being able to carry plasma and machine gun turrets by literally ripping them from their moorings is a nice new touch, one that i often wished for throughout Halo 2. i'm still on the fence about the change from being able to carry four of both grenade types in Halo 2, to two of three grenade types in Halo 3. as for vehicles, i found the new brute 'choppers' to be boring and annoying as both a friendly and a hostile obstacle in the field, and what happened to the warthogs with gauss cannons? conversely, the unsc mongoose was very fun to drive.
i found that the little cut scenes with hallucinatory transmissions from cortana interrupting gameplay to be particularly annoying, and reminiscent of the stupid revelatory hallucinations from the Chronicles of Riddick game.

i'm (hopefully) far from the end of the game, but overall, in spite of various confounding/annoying additions/omissions/differences between the three games, i am looking forward to playing Halo 3 as obsessively as i've played its predecessors. and, i have yet to play Halo online, so i'm sure once (if) i bother to activate my Xbox Live account some day, i will discover a whole new universe...