Of course, while I praise their high chairs in one post, I have to point out the dark or crappy side of IKEA, too:
1) According to Apartment Therapy, the stores--especially the NYC-area locations--run out of stock way too frequently. Take the advice of one fanatical IKEA shopper/cult member/commenter, Wendy, and visit every IKEA store on the eastern seaboard and note where the distribution center is located call ahead the night before.
2) According to 37signals, the user experience of IKEA's website sucks, oh, and [from the comments] since you mentioned it, what's up with those stores? They totally control how you shop and push you through their annoying little maze.
3) According to Curbed.com (yes, I only get information from weblogs now), IKEA is about to ruin Red Hook. Nothing like a giant parking lot and bigbox store to revitalize a waterfront, ja?
4) Oh, and according to the Guardian, it's a happy, shiny cult.
Technically, you don't have to walk through the maze (at least on the upper level, room sample stuff) if you know where the stuff is in the warehouse.
I do fear the cult-like status, though. Here in New Haven, people waited, like, 12 hours in line for the store to open. They could have driven to the New Jersey IKEA and back in about 4 hours.
Yeah, but those meatballs...
But you never know about I-95. it could take 12 hours.