The one word that describes the retail world coming in to yesterday's "Black Friday" is nervousness. Would the consumer pull-back on this season's shopping and would retailers suffer a terrible fate? Many big name "box" stores have already dropped their forecasts for the season and earnings expectations were lowered. Not so fast.

The consumer came out in droves yesterday, and in some cases even Thanksgiving night. The great Mall of America in suburban Minneapolis was abuzz from the get-go. I know because I was there.

The Mall of America has enough parking to accommodate 14,000 cars. When I arrived at the Mall with my 17-year-old daughter and her two friends, I knew things were good when I was directed to park my car a mile from the Mall and hop the shuttle bus.That's a good start. Before I did park in the remote area, I dropped off my daughter and drove around the parking garage. I wanted to see where these shoppers came from. I counted license plates from 21 different states and many from Canada as they sported the Ontario license plates.

Minneapolis--St.Paul, Minnesota is a beautiful metropolitan area: great schools, great health care, sophisticated and a very urban area. Venture outside of Minneapolis- St. Paul and one finds a state that boasts as its motto "The land of 10,000 lakes." Minnesota is indeed a beautiful and diverse state.

The biggest tourist attraction of the last decade is the Great Mall of America. With more than 400 stores and a theme park occupying the middle, the Mall attracts visitors from the other 49 states and from around the world. Use to be Northwest Airlines, headquartered in Minneapolis, would sponsor charter flights from Europe and Japan for shoppers to visit and spend Yen and Euros at the Mall.

The Twin Cities is also a major corporate headquarter city with the likes of 3M (NYSE: MMM), Target Corp. (NYSE: TGT), Medtronic (NYSE: MDT), US Bank (NYSE: USB), General Mills (NYSE: GIS) and many others. The Minneapolis-St.Paul Airport is a major hub in the U.S. with Northwest Airlines as its principle occupant.

But all of that pales before "The Bathroom."

The Mall of America in Bloomington, Minnesota is the biggest shopping mall in the United States. It ranks in the top three world-wide. The Mall of America is a five- minute drive from the Minneapolis-St.Paul airport and many a traveler with a few hours of layover will catch the every ten-minute shuttle bus to the Mall. The Mall of America draws people from the 50 states and from over 100 countries. The Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) retail store at the Mall is large and very busy.

I stopped by the Mall late this morning and extra security was present to manage the throngs sitting outside the Apple store. I was able to walk into the store easily as I was not in line for the iPhone--not yet at least--and wanted to speak with the sales staff.The store was buzzing and the staff ready and able to answer any and all iPhone questions. They expect record traffic beginning tonight at 6pm when the iPhone is officially available.

The sales associate I spoke too, John, told me he has never been this excited and was a little nervous. When I asked him how many units the Mall of America had in its initial inventory, John went stone silent. I pressed and he said he was not allowed to say. But he did say they had enough to get through the first two weeks. He went on to say that the staff is already figuring out the first two days sales expectations and will order more units from headquarters by this Monday.