The longest you have waited in a line, and what for

I waited in line 6 hours for a Wii. I think that was the longest line I've waited in. I was #2 and they only had 17 to sell.

Fortunately, to keep things from getting out of hand, they culled the line every hour and told people beyond 17 that it was unlikely that they were going to get one and to head elsewhere. Meanwhile, the Target across the parking lot was complete chaos. People that had been there all night and in line at the front door had people go to the side door, lie, and say they were there first. So Target had to draw numbers. The cops were there and everything.
 
Does military stuff count? I had many, many military air transport hops, where they would direct us to get to the terminal by [insert unreasonable time here], and then we would end up waiting for hours or even days for whatever aircraft would show and take us. We were marooned on the Azores for 2-3 days. It would have been cool if we could have done a little sight-seeing, but of course we had to stay at the terminal "just in case." I've slept in various hangars, maintenance shops, temporary shelters, and on lots of air terminal floors while in this Hurry-Up-and-Wait mode.
 
Thinking about it......

Maybe around HS I waited in line for Star Tours at Disneyland in 1987 and 1988. 1987 was a full day and I'm thinking it was at least a two hour wait with family members. In 1988 it was actually for Disneyland Grad Nite, so we only had a limited amount of time. That, and a friend and I were were wearing suits since that was supposedly a requirement. During that same trip we went to Magic Mountain, and I think we spent at least two hours in line for their new ride Ninja. We also did it on about 2 hours of sleep along with napping on the bus.

Other than that, I remember waiting almost all day to buy basketball tickets. It was for the last men's basketball game at UC Berkeley's Harmon Gymnasium before they were going to gut it and rebuild it bigger and taller. The tickets went on sale about 3 hours before game time (7:30 PM). I took the day off work and I got there at maybe 9:30 AM where there was already a line. The irony is that I went alone. I did take a bathroom break, and got back just in time to receive a wristband indicating my spot in line. The people in front of me vouched that I had been there all day. This was before smart phones, and where a Game Boy might last a couple of hours on a fresh set of batteries. I'm pretty sure I spent most of that time reading a printed newspaper.

More recently I waited about 3 hours in line at Russian River Brewing Co in Santa Rosa, California to get Pliny the Younger. And we only got two 10 oz glasses for $5 each, along with a pizza.
 


I waited in line 6 hours for a Wii. I think that was the longest line I've waited in. I was #2 and they only had 17 to sell.

Fortunately, to keep things from getting out of hand, they culled the line every hour and told people beyond 17 that it was unlikely that they were going to get one and to head elsewhere. Meanwhile, the Target across the parking lot was complete chaos. People that had been there all night and in line at the front door had people go to the side door, lie, and say they were there first. So Target had to draw numbers. The cops were there and everything.

I did this too, so I suppose that would be mine. It wasn't so much a line though as a party in a Walmart Garden Center. Some people even brought a TV, a Gamecube, and Smash!
 
3 hours for Splash Mountain and Indy back in the day.

Worst line, DMV for 4 hours to get a print out of my driving record for a job that I was to bring the paperwork for the next day. The line for the one DVM in my town was closed due to an outage so I had to drive to the next town over. To only get there and find that their system was down. Everyone stayed in line with the hopes that it would come back up. Once it did I was out within 30 minutes.
 
I think it was the line for the Millennium Force Roller Coaster at Cedar Point. I think we stood in line for just under three hours. Not sure I would ever do that again, but I was younger then and it sure was fun (the coaster not the line). :)
 


Mine is concert tickets too. Garth Brooks “back in the day”....I think we waited for about 18 hours, but there was a group of us with food, drinks, chairs, blankets, a deck of cards, some games, a radio...LOL. We had so much fun!

It probably goes without saying that we were in college at the time.
 
Over 3 hours for the Nutella Café in Chicago's grand opening. And what a crock it was. So, DD15 loves Nutella and discovered the Nutella Café would be opening on a day she didn't have school so we decided it would be something memorable and fun to do. Promos before the event said the first 100 customers would get some special items (plural), a free jar of Nutella, and could order off their menu. We were on the train by 6am (DD was asleep by 605 lol) and were about 20th in line when we arrived. We had brought a couple snacks but had planned on eating Nutella goodness for breakfast so we didn't have much. A few minutes before they opened, a handful of employees came out and handed bags to people, starting a few people behind us. I thought "Wow, our stuff must be awesome!" We get to the entrance and were handed a card and told to hand that to the person inside to get our special item. We walk by the order counter, were handed a croissant with a dollop of Nutella in it, and herded out the back door where a man was asking for the card and handed us a huge jar of Nutella. I got outside and just stood there in shock. I thought "Maybe they'll bring us back in after the line is gone". Nope, the restaurant was actually closed unless you were VIP press. And we had 2 huge jars of Nutella to carry around downtown Chicago (really sucked because I had a very small purse and DD didn't bring anything to carry it in). First and last time I will attend any sort of Grand Opening.
 
when dd would complain about having to set her alarm for her designated time to roll out of bed and make a few keystrokes on her laptop in order to sign up for classes i would shake my head and remind her of how i had to do it 'back in the day'. paper schedules, paper class forms, getting up to the window and finding out one class was full and you better have an alternate choice b/c if not they weren't going to wait for you to make one so it was back to the end of the line.....they don't know how good they've got it.
OMG, Exactly! When I went back to school to work on my graduate degree, it was a million times easier.
 
Longest wait would be something at WDW. Longest attempted wait was for concert tickets for Wings in 1976. Tickets were to go on-sale on a Saturday morning, we planned to campout from Wednesday night. They kept chasing us off until Friday night. While buying concert tickets is still awful, at least you can do it from the comfort of home now.:) I'm not waiting in line for anything now--even my WDW max is 25 minutes.
 
4 hours at the hospital when the found out I didn't have insurance. I had a broken wrist. My entire hand was purple. It wasn't even very busy. They didn't seem to care. I sat there in the waiting room holding my wrist in severe pain.

They finally x-rayed me, set me up in a cast, and just left me in the exam room for another hour, so I just left.

I never received a bill. I figured I'd get it in the mail or something. I was 19, broke, and likely wouldn't have been able to pay it anyways.
 
Camping out for concert ticket here too. Waited overnight for David Bowie tickets in 1982. Ended up in the 9th row in the arc of fold up chairs on the floor. We could see him through the curtain when he went offstage for a break. It was a great show!
 
About 2.5 hours in line for Splash Mtn when it opened in DL. Also 2.5 hours for Flight of Passage after it opened.
 
Back in the stone age before fast pass when Space Mountain was a relatively new thing, waits at Space Mountain were routinely over an hour and a half and peak waits during busier times could approach 3 hours. You had to get to and ride it first.

My first visit to WDW was a few months after Space Mountain opened. We were there at rope drop and ran to it. Wait was about 10 minutes. Later that night my father and I wanted to ride again and the wait was at least 90 minutes near closing time. My mother was waiting outside the whole time and couldn't do anything else because everything else closed soon after we got in line. I don't think there were any signs announcing estimated wait time back then.
 
My first visit to WDW was a few months after Space Mountain opened. We were there at rope drop and ran to it. Wait was about 10 minutes. Later that night my father and I wanted to ride again and the wait was at least 90 minutes near closing time. My mother was waiting outside the whole time and couldn't do anything else because everything else closed soon after we got in line. I don't think there were any signs announcing estimated wait time back then.

Out at DL, they had signs in the line itself. Your wait from here is approximately X. But that was it. There were no other ways to know how long it was. Of course my mother insisted on getting there bright and early.... To eat Breakfast instead of going to Space Mountain.......
 
I think about 3 hours for a taping of the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson back in 2014. My mum had a priority ticket, meaning she was guaranteed to get in, but my sister and I only had standby. Fortunately we all made it in, but when I got back to the hotel that night and checked my email I saw that they had actually upgraded my sister and I to priority so we didn’t need to line up at all!!!

Funnily enough, I just read this morning that at 6am a man was observed already lining up for a football (Australian Rules Football that is!) match tomorrow night. The match is a Preliminary Final (a semi final) between two Melbourne-based teams, both with some of the biggest followings in the league, and with a longstanding rivalry. All the reserved seats have sold out (and you had to be a paying member of one of the clubs, the AFL or the ground where the match is held to buy one). This man is a member of the ground (which currently has a waiting list of 21 years) and is lining up 36 hours in advance, in the cold, for a ticket, when it's not even the Grand Final!
 

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