Re: Wal-Mart: Chapter 3
I went down today, the first Saturday. Grainy phonecam photos collected here. I think that was the crowd they were worried about. Folks might have held back from the mid-week bow. Even so, they had a decent handle on things, from traffic control to crowd control. There was a lot of parking, though you might have had a longer walk than you would've liked. The aisles were crowded, but not too many "pile ups" (caused primarily by folks having spontaneous family reunions in mid shop).
And it is a huge store. It felt a lot bigger inside than it looked outside, and it looks big on the outside already!
As well as things flowed getting into and through the store, the registers were the major bottleneck. It was gridlock along the whole line of checkout stands, to the point where you couldn't find an actual "line." More a random crowd of folks facing generally the same way, trying not to (and sometimes failing) to cut in front of someone else. The store manager made his way through, listening to gripes and giving away free sodas.
The prices, of course, were great. We went in with one thing on our list, and left with six, most of them costing noticably less than what we would've paid at Longs.
The neatest thing I saw? The shopping cart escalator! It runs along the "up" escalator for humans, but it grabs your cart, holds it level, and drags it up to the top to meet you.
Traffic wise, there are only two notable problems. One, as Mitchell noted, is jaywalkers. People are too lazy to go to the lights to get across Keeaumoku. Two, since they have a long mauka-bound left-turn lane with light at mid-block, they should eliminate left turns at Makaloa and Kanunu streets. There are no lights there, and traffic backs up quite deep whenever someone tries to turn at those intersections.
I went down today, the first Saturday. Grainy phonecam photos collected here. I think that was the crowd they were worried about. Folks might have held back from the mid-week bow. Even so, they had a decent handle on things, from traffic control to crowd control. There was a lot of parking, though you might have had a longer walk than you would've liked. The aisles were crowded, but not too many "pile ups" (caused primarily by folks having spontaneous family reunions in mid shop).
And it is a huge store. It felt a lot bigger inside than it looked outside, and it looks big on the outside already!
As well as things flowed getting into and through the store, the registers were the major bottleneck. It was gridlock along the whole line of checkout stands, to the point where you couldn't find an actual "line." More a random crowd of folks facing generally the same way, trying not to (and sometimes failing) to cut in front of someone else. The store manager made his way through, listening to gripes and giving away free sodas.
The prices, of course, were great. We went in with one thing on our list, and left with six, most of them costing noticably less than what we would've paid at Longs.
The neatest thing I saw? The shopping cart escalator! It runs along the "up" escalator for humans, but it grabs your cart, holds it level, and drags it up to the top to meet you.
Traffic wise, there are only two notable problems. One, as Mitchell noted, is jaywalkers. People are too lazy to go to the lights to get across Keeaumoku. Two, since they have a long mauka-bound left-turn lane with light at mid-block, they should eliminate left turns at Makaloa and Kanunu streets. There are no lights there, and traffic backs up quite deep whenever someone tries to turn at those intersections.
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