For some, the pre-Black Friday

sales are a family affair for Thanksgiving, with shoppers arriving at one local store as early as Tuesday morning.

Forget over the river and through the woods.

For the Sandoval family of Orlando, Thanksgiving meant over Interstate 4 and through the Best Buy parking lot — followed by two days and eight hours of waiting.

“We got here at 8:30 in the morning — on Tuesday,” said Thamires Sandoval, 27, just minutes before the electronics store near the Mall at Millenia was scheduled to open for its ultraearly Black Friday deals.

Under a gloomy sky late Thursday afternoon, a line of more than 300 other deal-hungry shoppers stood behind them, snaking around the building and across the parking lot.

There were elderly people with canes. Babies in strollers. Twenty-somethings in foldable chairs, tethered to their phones. A couple of families had pitched tents.

“We’re, like, celebrities, being first in line,” said Maria Sandoval, 14, Thamires’ niece. “People keep coming up and asking us questions. They even want to take pictures with us.”

Transplants from Brazil, the Sandovals were led by Maria’s grandmother, Norma, who began this battle-the-mob Black Friday tradition in 1997. She always gets what she wants, Thamires said.

This year, that was a Sharp 50-inch Ultra High Definition Smart TV for $179 — at least $100 less than Thamires had found advertised anywhere else. They would get two of them.

“That’s what all these people want,” said Jose Peña, 29, gesturing toward the masses. “But you don’t know how many of those TVs they have in the store.”

Rumors were circulating there were 18, maybe 20, of the coveted TVs available.

Peña, of Orlando, was second in line, arriving at noon Wednesday, an entire day later than his predecessors. He and two friends had taken turns dodging the occasional rain shower and making fast-food runs. The family behind them had a tent, sleeping bags and an ice chest — but Peña’s group had only a single umbrella to shelter them, and someone always had to stay in line to guard their coveted position. He had slept just three hours by Thursday afternoon.

“It will be worth it, though,” he said. When he and his friends got their TVs, they’d head home, where a Thanksgiving dinner awaited them. Then, they’d celebrate.

“Tonight I need to see one movie on my new TV,” he said. “Any movie.”

SARAH ESPEDIDO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER A Best Buy associate greets shoppers Thursday. Thamires and Maria Sandoval were first in line for the early Black Friday sale — arriving at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday at the store near Millenia Mall.