All day Thursday, people were lining up at their favorite stores throughout the area, waiting on the doors to open for big sales to start the holiday shopping season.
As of 10pm Thursday, WalMart on Highway 501 near Carolina Forest has a full parking lot. People are parking in the grass that borders the parking lot.
Tanger Outlet on Highway 501 is packed as well with lines out the doors.
In Marion County, the WalMart is crowded with shoppers, and lines of shoppers waiting to check out inside the store wind around aisles and through the store.
At the new Horry County Target on Highway 544, which opened at 9pm, the first person in line got there at 1:30pm. Throughout the day the number of people in line grew. Just before the doors opened, the line stretched around the side of the parking lot.
Most people said they were there for electronics.
That's exactly what Guy Dean waited in line to buy, as he has done for the past six years. He got in line at the Myrtle Beach Best Buy at 8am Tuesday morning (which opens Friday at midnight), and he wasn't even the first in line. There were two people in front of him.
Dean says it's definitely worth the wait. He doesn't even miss Thanksgiving dinner, someone in his family always delivers it to him.
But there is a nationwide outcry against stores opening on Thanksgiving night.
Thousands of WalMart employees are poised to strike, saying they were pushed to the picket line after learning they had to report to work on Thanksgiving.
Other shoppers say they are disappointed some of the sales at stores are not what was advertised. One shopper told NewsChannel 15 hundreds of people were in line for a sale on a TV at a Sears store in Florence, only to be told by the manager that they only had four of the TVs available.
Nationwide, 147 million people plan to shop this weekend.
