Like the majority who post here, I'm still kind of new to this. I spent the last year working a lot on myself (getting fit, inner game, chatting up strangers) and I'm only now finally starting to apply this to ladies.

Friday night I went to a regular Reddit meetup in my city. The Friday nights always wind up crazy, starting at one bar before everyone basically bounces out to all sorts of bars. Unsurprisingly it's mostly guys, and even more unsurprising most of these guys will not approach women. My only goal for the night was to try the opener "what time do you wake up in the morning?" because a friend bet me it would never work.

Our starting location is an arcade/bar and the pickings are typically pretty slim. Saw two girls wearing what appeared to be cat ears (one had whiskers drawn on her face) and some of the guys I was with kept pointing them out, but nobody would talk to them.
They were sitting at the bar and I knew we were about to leave soon, so I just walked up, put my hands on both their shoulders and said "So is it someone's birthday, or the worst bachelorette party ever?" They both turned and started engaging me, the more attractive of the two immediately started touching my arm then put her arm on my back/shoulder.
They told me that had come from Brew at the Zoo, and one was dressed as a panther and the other a giraffe. Made some small talk about that, how I know a zoo where you can feed the giraffes, and how weird their tounges are. At this point a guy I was with extracted me because (in his opinion) I was "crashing and burning" which was absolutely not true, but I played it off as "oh, we're apparently heading out, it was nice talking to you have a great night." I easily could have gotten #s, but wasn't feeling it.

Next couple bars were really weak sauce, then we wound up at this small dive where we typically finish the night. I had told the guys I was with I needed to use the wake up line, and someone reminded me about it. There was a single 2-set at this bar, one was cute the other not so much.
I walked up to them and said "Hey! What time do you guys wake up in the morning?" The cute one started lauging, the other one (we soon learned a major mother hen) started in about how that was a terrible line that would never work - but it totally opened them and they wound up talking to us until last call. I mostly ignored the cute one until we were about to leave, talked to her briefly and said we were about to leave, and pointed at my cheek and got a cheek kiss no problem. Told them we were going to some pizza joint and left.

We go and get pizza, standing outside eating it, when the two girls show up. The mother hen tries to take some pizza, and we all block her. Then the rest of the group distracts while I talk to the cute friend. I can't remember the initial small talk, but we're kind of standing there and she's looking at me and I say "you want to kiss me, don't you?" and she sort of hesitates and says "no" and I say "you don't seem so certain, let's find out" and I just lean in and went for it.

It was just a little peck, but I've never done anything like that with a stranger before. About that time was when my group decided to move on, so I told them to have a great night and went on my way.

My 2 biggest lessons of the night - openers barely matter, and always be escalating.