What do Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Amazon and Stuffed Oreos have in common?

Amazon continues to amaze me. When I visited their website last night, I saw a large banner announcing J.K. Rowling’s new Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. The book was due to be released at midnight that night.

That wasn’t the amazing part. The amazing part was the words underneath the announcement. Order from 9:45pm to 11:30pm tonight for delivery between midnight and 2am on 7/31.

Now how could I resist that? It was about 6:00 pm when I saw the announcement so I tried clicking the banner to order the book. No can do. You had to wait until 9:45pm and you had to use the Prime Now app on your smartphone or tablet.

Set an alarm for 9:40pm

Next, I did what any good techie would do—I set an alarm for 9:40pm. Yes, 9:40pm, not 9:45pm. I wanted a five-minute buffer after the alarm sounded to get to my phone and be ready to order with the Prime Now app.

Everything went exactly as planned. My alarm went off. I waited until exactly 9:45pm, then opened the app and proceeded to order my copy of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

Two problems cropped up. The first was that the price of the book was under $20 and Prime Now requires all orders be over $20 to qualify for the two-hour delivery. It was late at night, so the first thing that popped in my head was munchies for my boys and me. Tap, tap, tap, boom! Found it—Oreo Double Stuf Cookies (side note: I never realized “Stuf” only had one f). I added them to my cart and was ready to hit the checkout.

That’s when I encountered the second problem. By the time I had done all of this, Amazon said that all of their delivery windows for that night were full. I was bummed but it did say to keep trying so I did just that. Wouldn’t you know it, by the third try, a delivery window had popped up so I placed my order at precisely 9:56pm with a promised delivery of between 12:00am – 2:00am.

Waiting for delivery

All that was left to do now was to wait up to two hours for the delivery. I was bound and determined to be awake when my new book arrived. I made it to 12:00am, then 12:15am, then 12:30am. But I was soooooooo tired at this point, I had to give up. I knew the delivery was on its way because the Prime Now app tells you who is delivering your order and even shows you where they are on a map in real time!

From my best estimations, my delivery guy was about 30 minutes away. Sure enough, I went to bed and fell asleep. But when I woke in the morning, my Harry Potter and the Cursed Child book and Double Stuf Oreos were waiting for me on my doorstep. So was an alert on my phone telling me that my order had been delivered at 1:09am.

Which first? Harry Potter or the Oreos?

I was so excited that I didn’t know which to dive into first—the Harry Potter boook or the Oreos. But then I remembered it was morning and it probably wouldn’t be setting a good example to my kids to have Oreo cookies for breakfast.

The irony of the whole thing is that I really didn’t need the Harry Potter book that fast. Admittedly, I just got sucked up in the excitement of ordering something at 10:00 at night and having it delivered just a few hours later. If I had the chance to do it again, I’d do it in a heartbeat.