I bought the Wii U on EBay and got ripped off. Thankfully I was able to get the Wii U Deluxe on Wednesday before Christmas at Walmart. Sunday night, I opened the Wii U and set it up, so it would have time to do updates, etc before my children played Christmas Eve. I was successful doing initial setup and updates. It took hours and hours, but I love Nintendo. I think I spent 6-8 hours total. I did the system update and then updated Nintendland, NSMB U, and Avengers. Great, now we can play for Christmas! Think again... ... 
btw - I spend over an hour on hold with Nintendo today on the phone. Hey, it's the day after Christmas, I am trying to be very patient here.
HERE'S THE PROBLEM...When I turn on the Wii U, the "Select a user." page comes up fine. I select my user with the little orange "n" icon in the top right corner, and then...AND THEN...I put in my password for my "Nintendo Network ID". Now comes the ETERNAL "Please wait..." screen.
Nothing happens after that. It will sit there and look at me FOREVER. I can turn off my fancy smanshy Wii U controller, but I have to disconnect the console from the AC Adapter in order for it to turn off.
I have waited a few minutes and then plugged in again, retried logging in, and only get the same "Please wait..." I have done this a minimum dozen times. Please tell me the "Please wait..." ...FOREVER is an operator error.
HELP !!! My Christmas has been spent doing house chores while waiting indefinitely instead of playing new games with my children. I am a long time Nintendo fan. I know you guys got a reasonable answer to this.