Most people my age stay up partying for hours past midnight on New Year’s Eve. Me? I was in bed within five minutes of the ball dropping on TV. See, it’s important to me to be able to get up bright and early each January 1st, as it’s always quite a big day for LEGO collectors. And today was no exception, as a ton of new-for-2015 LEGO sets became available today online and in the LEGO Stores! And for those not lucky enough to have a local LEGO Store to visit, I went ahead and took a “few” photos this morning…

As I rushed out the door this morning to head to my nearest LEGO Store, I had a bit of anxiety that I’d be the only person in the store and would end up looking like a total creeper as I took dozens of photos of the latest set arrivals.

That was not the case. Entering at 10:15AM, the local LEGO Store was already swamped with customers. Why…? Because 100+ new sets were freshly stocked in the store this morning!

The “main event” of the day’s new releases was definitely multi-fold. First of all, the long-awaited LEGO Star Wars Slave-I UCS set finally went up for sale today, after months of anticipation!

While I’d seen hi-res photos of the set ages ago, this was my first time seeing it in person. The 2015 LEGO UCS Slave-1 set is positively massive! This is easily the largest Slave-1 LEGO set ever released, and sure to be one of the top-selling LEGO Store 2015 exclusives.

Even though I arrived early in the day, there were only two LEGO Slave-I sets left on the shelves (with small additionally quantities in the back, according to employees).

And speaking of sets that were almost wiped out, the store was already down to one LEGO Frozen Elsa’s Sparkling Ice Castle set.

I saw that set sell within a minute of my entering the store, and then saw multiple parties come in looking for it and asking my store to call other local LEGO Stores to see if more were in-stock. Clearly, it’s going to take a while for the demand for LEGO Frozen to be satiated.

The other big release yesterday was the very-loved LEGO 2015 Modular Building: the LEGO Detective’s Office! This was my first time seeing the Detective’s Office modular building in person, but I’ve looked at it so frequently online that it felt like an old friend (made of plastic bricks).

The Detective’s Office set didn’t seem to be selling as fast as the new LEGO Slave-I or Elsa’s Castle, but I definitely saw people checking it out and some folks leaving the store with it.

Finally, the latest LEGO Ideas set was in-stock: the LEGO Birds! I had actually forgotten that this was being released this month, but I grabbed one instantly off the shelf. I don’t want to risk this set becoming the pain in the buns to acquire that the LEGO Mars Rover and Research Institute turned out to be.

In addition to those exclusives, I also got to see the LEGO Brainiac Attack ship and the LEGO Star Wars Anakin’s Custom Jedi Starfighter sets for the first time. I love me some Clone Wars, so the Azure Angel came home with me.

The LEGO Romantic Dinner set that was just revealed earlier this week also turned up for sale on the first day of the year. This is an adorable set–I’m curious to see if these sell quickly!

And that’s not all! LEGO Bionicle made its triumphant return today, with all twelve sets (including the Protectors that weren’t talked about much before release) making their debut!

And finally–LEGO Stores finally stocked the LEGO Minecraft sets that have been available online since November. I bought mine online a while back, but it was still nice to see such a presence for the sets in a physical store.

All of these sets are now available for order through the online LEGO Store, which is restocking and processing orders as quickly as possible. If you’re looking to order any of the hard-to-find LEGO Store exclusives and want them delivered this month, now is the time to order.

Overall, it was a great first day of 2015 for me as far as LEGOs are concerned! Have you made your first LEGO purchase of 2015 yet, LEGO fans?