If you're a savvy shopper, then BF has deals that cannot be replicated throughout the rest of the year. The mere fact that places like slickdeals and fatwallet have active and dedicated BF forums shows that the most knowledgable shoppers are very interested in this event.
Exactly.
If you have kids that you are shopping for, you'll likely get some great deals. We got nerf guns for more than 50% off at meijers, skylanders swap force starter kit for 40% off, buy two get one free on individual skylanders at Toys R Us....
$9.99 remote control helicopters at K-Mart, a whole crapload of stuff from target and Kohls...
We didn't even show up at right at opening. We went to some of them on our way home from Thanksgiving dinner. My kids and I stayed in the car and dropped my wife off at the door then picked her and the stuff up when she came out.
In fact, we were going by Best Buy at 10:00 PM and I saw they had a line and were handing out tickets and bracelets, so I had my wife get out with the flier and hop into line. The line was about 20 people long because it was the second doorbuster, and we got a nice cheap camera that we needed out of the deal and a couple of the dirt cheap android tablets for my boys to read books and play games on.
All in all we saved a ton of money, didn't stress, and had fun shopping. No lines, really.