The New American Shopping Experience is here in Sydney

Despite the heavy rain and traffic jams caused by the huge crowds, my wife and I joined the thousands of shoppers to shop at Costco's first Sydney store yesterday. Our new American way of shopping experience started long before we arrived at the store. We were stuck in an one and a half kilometre traffic jam leading to the 14,000-square-metre warehouse store in Auburn; the second to be opened in Australia by the US chain that sells discounted products in bulk to customers who pay a $60 membership fee.
We had read in the papers that their first Melbourne store received a rapturous response from shoppers on their grand opening and we were sort of preparing ourselves for a big turnout at the first Sydney outlet when it opened its doors yesterday. But nothing could have prepared us to this entirely new shopping experience. It was beyond our expectation! Customers had arrived two hours earlier before the opening time at the Sydney store and quickly filled up the 800-capacity car park. When we finally inched our car to our destination, we had to park at the designated overflow car park opposite the store.

We were soon ushered to join the long queue of customers pushing oversized shopping trolleys towards the entrance of the store. Inside this well-lit warehouse, we were taken aback by the pallets stacked three high of variety of products ranging from TV sets to household goods and fresh produces.
Soon I was overwhelmed not by the special opening offers that the crowds were piling into their trolleys but the congestion at the checkouts told me it was time for me to get of there.

Unfortunately, I had to cut short my new shopping experience and decided to head home early and come back another time only if their prices are attractive enough to entice me to shop with them again.