Their mission failed, but it wasn't for lack of strategic planning.

Rosemary Jones and Claudine Riley pulled into the Walmart parking lot off Delaware Avenue at 3:45 a.m. Jones, 60, who lives in Upper Darby, had slept over at her sister's house in North Philadelphia.

"We got up at 2 a.m. to be sure we were here in time," said Riley, 64, holding a large Dunkin' Donuts coffee.

Their mission: two deeply discounted ride-on battery-powered motor cycles and a wide-screen, high definition TV.

They parked their silver sedan in one of the last open spaces, shlepped in the dark to join the hundreds of customers zig-zagging through the carefully monitored lines, and once inside, bolted for the toy section.

There, they found another line of consumer competitors, some of whom told them they'd been in position since 11 p.m.

At 5 a.m., the feeding frenzy began and Jones and Riley watched as the earlier Christmas raptors snatched the gifts they'd hoped to buy for their grandchildren.

"Gone," Jones said, shaking her head ruefully. "All gone.

"We were both out of luck," said Riley.

The sisters made do. By 8 a.m., they had filled a shopping cart with a $49 three-wheeled scooter (scored for nearly half the normal price), a Raptor 700 remote controlled toy rider on a Yamaha motorcycle, a football, a basketball and a pile of fleece pajamas.

Not bad, but not nearly enough for their eight grandchildren and a "host of nieces and nephews."

Pushing their haul back out into the parking lot, they found themselves among dozens of wanderers, searching zombie-like for their cars.

"We were all so focused on getting in, we forgot to notice where we'd parked," said Riley.

A few yards away, Annie McBride, her sister and daughter had just found their black Hyundai van. Their cart brimmed with coats, towels, gloves, hats and scarves destined for the Christmas delivery to 11 relatives ranging from 19 months to 40 years.

"We're going to get just about all our shopping done today," said McBride.

Next stop?

"KMart!"

.

Once they finished the dizzying loop-the-loop line, and past the wall of security guards, Denise Bartholetti, her daughter, Nicole DiPadova, and her granddaughter, Samantha Sturkey, gave a momentary sigh of relief. They'd found refuge from the bitter wind in the parking lot, but now had to face the crowd.

They passed shoppers speaking Vietnamese and Spanish and Chinese and English accented in all variations buying document shredders and Cootie Games and the Twilight DVD. A man hoisting a microwave onto his shoulder, a small boy holding chasing his mother and crying (loudly), "I want it!"

"I told you no!" she said.

Except in the highly competitive departments where the stock of Little Dreams walking dolls with two outfits was quickly disappearing, shoppers cooperated.

"Where did you get that?" one woman asked another, eyeing her Connect Four game.

"Next aisle, over there."

Others were on their own.

"Wait!" one young woman called out to her husband. "I think I found it!!"

She closed in on a shelf of board games and groaned. "Maybe not."

In good cheer, one woman heading for the long check-out line wore a Santa hat embellished with a snow ball bobbing on a coiled spring.

Above the low rumble of shopping carts, the consultations over color and price and the squawking coming from the bicycle department where a 10-year-old boy was passing his unsupervised time, testing pneumatic horns, a voice of authority periodically sounded.

"We still need a manager to the garden center, please."

The bustle energized Bartholetti, a biller for the Rothman Institute. She was in the zone, having spent much of the night before at Toys R Us.

"It was worth it," she said. "I saved about $500."

She had taken a few hours off for a power nap and then got up again for an early start at Walmart.

Samantha, 7, ran the show, advising her mother and grandmother about which toys to buy for the kids on their lists.

And what did she want from Santa?

Pausing less than a nanosecond, she said, "A Nintendo DSI."

"Have you been good this year?" her mother said, bending over to give the girl a kiss. "I think so."

Contact Staff Writer Melissa Dribben at 215-854-2590 or mdribben@phillynews.com