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Orlando Ikea Draws Crowd

KATHY MOORE / The Tampa Tribune

First time IKEA customer, Donisha MacArthur, 21, of Casselberry, arrived on Tuesday, tent in hand, to await the opening of IKEA in Orlando on Wednesday.

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By NEIL JOHNSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 14, 2007

Updated: 11/14/2007 12:29 pm

A Look Inside Ikea | Photo Gallery

ORLANDO - Ten minutes before 9 a.m., the doors opened to Florida's newest Ikea store, and for more than 20 minutes an endless line of shoppers streamed in, some after waiting more than a day or driving for hours.

Ranks of yellow-shirted employees, cheering and banging inflated thundersticks like those at hockey and basketball games, funneled the customers toward the lone escalator leading to the second-floor showroom.

The din from the banging noisemakers was a testament to the power of percussion as shoppers slowly fanned out into the 309,000-square-foot building, many yelling as enthusiastically as the employees.

Each shopper held a large yellow plastic bag they were handed. Inside were a map and a catalog and a pencil and pad to write down what they intended to buy.

This was after hours spent outside listening to blaring rock music, an Ikea master of ceremonies acting like a highly-caffeinated cheerleader enticing shouts and yells from the crowd, speeches that may not have been too exciting and Ikea workers dancing and banging on the ubiquitous thundersticks.

Then there was the traditional Swedish log sawing that involved a 6-inch-thick oak branch - wisely sawed nearly through beforehand – that replaces ribbon cuttings at the store openings. When Ikea opened a store in Sunrise this year, someone sawed a palm log.

Get ready, Tampa, because this is scheduled to come to Ybor City in 2009 when the company opens a store.

Inside the store, Angel Vandegrift, 26, was shopping for furniture. It was her first time in an Ikea and not her last.

"I just moved to Orlando. I plan on buying everything here. Forget Target," she said.

Another shopper, Rebecca VanDyke, who had waited outside since 7:15 p.m. Tuesday, said other furniture stores should worry about the arrival of Ikea.

"The design here will override all the other furniture stores. You want to buy another home to put everything" in, she said.

A spokesman for the company said he did not know how many people were in line when the doors finally opened.

But just more than three hours before that, roughly 300 people stood in a line that snaked in front of the trademark blue and yellow building.

The sun was barely nosing the eastern horizon.

Entertainers wandered on stilts, jugglers tossed clubs, and a group of young men did stunts on trampolines. Ikea workers handed out coffee, doughnuts and small boxes of juice.

Chavela Williams was huddled in a blanket and sitting in a folding chair. She arrived from Longwood about 6 p.m. Tuesday, No. 83 in line. She had never done anything like camping out for a store opening.

Her number in line was significant because the first 100 got a free chair valued at $89.

"The things you'll do for a chair," she said.

Officially, the store allowed people to begin lining up at 9 a.m. Monday, but that's not the way you get to be first in line.

Dianna Felch drove from Lakeland and arrived about 11 p.m. Sunday. She slept in her van in a shopping center parking lot, then spent the next 48 hours waiting to be the first customer through the doors.

And all this from a person who had never heard of the Swedish furniture store that inspires cultlike customer loyalty and spurs people to drive for hours.

"I didn't even know what Ikea was," she said.

During the night, Ikea workers entertained people in line with games such as Ikea Bingo.

Felch, an Ikea newcomer, is a vastly different story than Jacki Colwell, who drove from Deltona. Colwell, 44, guesses she's been to dozens of Ikea stores in Europe and the U.S.

A self-confessed "Ikea freak," she says a family running joke is that she goes to Ikea stores to buy paper napkins for craft projects and that those napkins wind up costing hundreds of dollars after she ends up buying everything else.

"The last time I went to the store in Atlanta, it cost $1,500," she said.

Coming to Ikea was fulfilling a promise that friends Paula Lewis and Lashon Reid made.

"We always said if it ever comes here, we would go," said Lewis, 49, of Longwood. They plan on making the opening of Tampa's store.

"Heck yeah we'll do that. There's family there. We've got backup," she said.

Jason Kassley and his girlfriend drove from Tampa on Tuesday afternoon and spent the night, a sleepless one for Kassley.

"I pretty much sat in my chair and listened to the helicopters," he said.

Their goal once inside the store was to find a bed.

As the countdown to the opening neared its end, Betty Brown of Orlando was talking excitedly on her cell phone. Brown is not only an Ikea veteran, she's a veteran of Ikea openings.

This was her third.

"One in California they had to close the freeway," she said. "This is mild."

Neil Johnson can be reached at (813) 259-7731 or njohnson@tampatrib.com.

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