NEW YORK, Dec. 10 (UPI) -- Apple Inc. said its newest retail outlet in New York's Grand Central Terminal had traffic volume of 4,000 by noon on its first day.
The company said 2,500 customers were in line when the store opened its doors and that some of them had been in line for 24 hours, The Wall Street Journal reported Saturday.
One customer, a retired man fairly close to the front of the line, said he had attended the grand opening of 30 different Apple stores, the newspaper said.
To put the company's popularity in perspective, Apple stores -- about 300 worldwide -- generate more customer traffic in a three-month span than Walt Disney Co's four largest theme parks, the Journal said.
All the more impressive, "With so many retailers closing stores and diminishing their footprint in a slow-growing economy, Apple has been able to forge ahead," said Ken Perkins, president at Retail Metrics, a research firm.
And how is confidence measured? Apple paid the former tenant at the Grand Central Terminal location $5 million to vacate the space eight years earlier than the lease stipulated.
