BANGOR – Canadian Carl Meade drove a half day just to sit back and watch the spectacle called early-bird shopping Friday morning.

A few minutes after 5 a.m., the married Halifax man stood belly laughing outside of KB Toys in the Bangor Mall as dozens of women – and several men – charged from outdoors toward the retailer’s store front, which was opening up to kick off the holiday shopping season.

“I’ve been doing this for 15 years and I’ll tell you, I get a bigger charge watching these women running through the mall than anything else,” said Meade as shoppers crammed inside the toy store. Meade’s wife, Noreen, was among the sprinters.

Shoppers throughout the Bangor Mall area Friday morning shared Meade’s perspective. Thrill seekers one and all, they couldn’t help but people-watch as the craziness of day-after-Thanksgiving bargain hunting unfolded.

Thousands of people, including at least four tour buses from Canada, began lining up at major retailers on Thanksgiving night to be the first ones to grab everything from $29 DVD players to $33 vacuum cleaners to $6 three-packs of underwear.

Outside the mall and outside other stores, lines of shoppers chanted “open” while anxiously awaiting closed stores to open. At Bangor Wal-Mart, shoppers banged shopping carts on the pavement at 5:50 a.m., 10 minutes before the store’s opening.

When the doors finally opened, the stampedes at KB Toys and Wal-Mart both were thunderous. The mad dash for the merchandise was reminiscent of the running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain. Consumers tried not to get hit by shopping carts.

“All of our friends say, ‘are you nuts?'” said Linda Fougere of Halifax, who was shopping with the Meades. “I tell them, when you see a picture of all those fools lined up outside those stores in Bangor, look closely. That will be us.”

Retailers focused on offering good customer service and providing plenty of bargains.

Bret Walters, manager of Bangor Wal-Mart, led his associates through the store’s daily pre-opening motivational cheer about five minutes before he unlocked the door.

“Let’s be sure we take care of our customers first,” Walters told his co-workers. “Let’s make sure that we’re safe on the sales floor. Let’s just be sure we have fun while we’re at it.”

Shoppers were also enthusiastic. And they spent money.

“We’re a little too busy to look at the numbers,” said Donny Elston, store director of Toys ‘R Us. “The carts are pretty full. That’s good.”

The National Retail Federation predicts that consumers will spend 5.7 percent more this holiday season than last year, when sales were up 2.2 percent from 2001. In Maine, consumers spent $1.27 billion on holiday merchandise and other retail sales, excluding building supplies and food sales, during the months of October, November and December last year. If the federation is right, Mainers will spend $72 million more during the same three months this year compared to last.

Karen Lambert of Corinth, who was outside KB Toys at 7:10 a.m. with her daughter-in-law, Victoria Lambert, said she is one of the Mainers spending more this year.

“Oh, way up,” she said, after spending 1 hour and 10 minutes inside the toy store and spending $500 to boot. “I have six grandchildren under the age of 9. What more fun could we have?”

Besides wanting to shower grandchildren with gifts, shoppers are experiencing a renewed confidence in the economy, even though eastern and northern Maine have lost thousands of manufacturing jobs. Bangor continues to be a draw for consumers, including Canadians who are getting 76 cents U.S. for every one of their dollars, up from the low 60-cent range last year.

“The tax is different, too, at home,” said Noreen Meade. “At home, it’s 15 percent on everything.”

Dramatic changes in Bangor’s retail landscape haven’t stopped consumers. Last year, Ames Department Store was conducting its “going out of business” sale, Porteous department store was open in the mall, and the new Wal-Mart Supercenter wasn’t opened yet in Brewer.

Now, Marshalls fills part of Ames’ former location, Porteous remains vacant, and the new Wal-Mart was shunned by early-bird shoppers who flocked to the mall area first because most of the major retailers are concentrated there. The Wal-Mart Supercenter, however, began filling with customers by 10 a.m., four hours after its Bangor counterpart opened, employees said.

Wayne Snyder, chairman of Kravco Corp., the owner of Bangor Mall, said this week that even though Porteous and other stores are vacant in the mall, sales are up about 9 percent over last year. The average nationally is 7 percent. He said he expects holiday sales to be up 6 percent over last year.

“The mall is healthy,” Snyder said. “Sales in the [651,683-square-foot] mall are about $365 a square foot. That is actually quite good.”

Snyder said he expects to have a signed lease within 60 days for the former Porteous location, and a tenant moved in within eight months. He said he could not name the prospective tenant.

What mattered most to consumers on Friday morning, however, was that the store they wanted to shop at was open on time and stocked with plenty of inventory. The Best Buy and Circuit City parking lots were so full that people parked their cars on Stillwater Avenue.

Cheryl Whittington of Bangor got in line at Wal-Mart at 11:30 p.m. Thursday. Soon, she had become friends with 11 other people, and in the wee hours of the morning, the group formulated a plan on how to tackle the sale. They combined their lists, split up inside the store and picked up what everyone wanted. They met up at lay-away at 6:10 a.m.

Whittington’s list included six DVD players, one digital camera, one electric razor, three Hokey Pokey Elmos, an Easy-Bake Oven, and a $495 computer.

“And a partridge in a pear tree,” a friend quipped as Whittington finished reciting her list.

Whittington was able to buy everything on her list, at big discounts.

“It’s like last year, I got $2,400 worth of stuff for $1,000,” she said. “That’s the way I figured it.”

She hadn’t calculated how much she saved Friday.

The Canadians, however, said they believed that they were going to save a lot of money, whether it was being spent on food, presents or necessities.

Outside the Brewer Wal-Mart Supercenter, an Acadian Lines tour bus from Halifax was filling up as shoppers exited the store. Tour director Pippa Wood said her company has been running tours since early October, with passengers paying $235 for the trip. The price includes hotel rooms for three nights.

“I think it’s worth it because you get a variety of things you might not get at home,” Wood said.

Carol Hughes of Hantsport, Nova Scotia, said with careful planning, the trip actually saves shoppers money.

“We figure out how much it costs and then how much in duty we have to pay,” Hughes said. “We end up saving quite a bit, and there’s better things [to buy] over here.”

Heather Turner, also of Hantsport, said more Canadians are finding that’s its financially better for them to shop in Maine.

“There’s people who haven’t been coming for years who are now coming again,” said Turner, who has taken a tour bus to Maine every Thanksgiving weekend for the last 12 years.

Fougere, a fellow Nova Scotia resident, didn’t come to Bangor by bus. Fougere, the Meades, Elaine Allen of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, Tania Hutt of Halifax and four others convoyed in three Dodge Caravans. Atop the roofs of two of the vehicles were luggage containers that weren’t going to be used for holiday gifts.

“Nope, turkeys,” Fougere said. “They’re 46 cents a pound. Up there, the cheapest one is $2.09 [Canadian; $1.61 U.S.]. Any excuse to go on a trip is good. To shop, it’s even better.”