Hello everyone, 

there are so many LL here, but I just feel that I have to share my experience :)

I got 5Ps and I got especially happy about that. To be honest, if I'd not get 5Ps I would not think it was fair. 
Initially, I was thinking to pass the exam in October 2012, but eventually I took it in March 2013.
I think I was trying to make it too perfect all the time and this might have caused this huge delay.

I am working full-time and I was not pushing myself. My attitude was this is just a hobby - to prepare for exam.
Probably that's why It took me around 9 months to prepare :). 
I had a break for one month and I do not recommend to take any long-term breaks because it takes more efforts to re-study. But I had to take that break.

I started the whole process with the Head First book: it was nice to read and helped me understand many important concepts. However, I had a feeling that questions in it were too easy :)
Moreover, I think I had an old edition of the book which came before PMBOK 4th edition, so I was looking to get other sources as well. I think I spent around 15% of the time preparing with Head First.

My initial high level to-do list was to:
- Finish Head First - fun to read
- Read PMBOK - at first attempt I got too bored, so I skipped reading PMBOK until the last moment :)
- Read Rita's Book - recommended by fellow PMP, planned to read it after Head First
- Read Kim Heldman's book - different structure in the book, not based on KA as many other guides, that was the reason why I postponed reading it to later stages and did not read it even although now I think I should have read it just for my own benefit :)

After Head First I moved to Rita's book which I liked very much as well. It gave me a deeper understanding of the subject. Exercises in the book used the approach that I did not personally enjoy, but I think they were quite useful. I think 60% of my time was spent with RMC products.
Moreover, the Practice Exams at the end of the Chapters were quite interesting although I still do not agree with some of the correct answers listed. Overall, in any mock exam or practice questions, I usually found some correct answers that were contradiciting common sense or correct answers in some other exam.

In general, every time I was doing Practice Tests I was disappointed with some of the correct answers based on author's judgment which I could not share. Maybe that is the reason why all these third-party practice exams indicate pass rate at 70-80% because there is always a bunch of questions that you will answer differently even though you are quite experienced and knowledgeable. 

I think I did 2 iterations of RMC book (maybe more for some parts) and I noticed that for some questions that I marked correct in my previous attemtps I am now getting wrong answers :)
This made me disappointed a little bit although I would get 70-80% of the answers correct.
I had a feeling that this would never end since re-studying is not making my rate higher.

In parallel I red Andy Crowe's book which also helped me summarize the key points :), however, I would not recommend it as a single Prep Guide at least if you want to get near-perfect scores.

Then I decided to go for PM FastTrack questions. I scored 88% on 100 questions and this raised my morale.
I decided to take a 4 hour test once a week. Usually I would score more than 80% on them.
I tried to change my attitude to care less about wrong answers due to judgment and concentrate on my own grey areas (gaps) that I would discover from each exam.
I used PM Fast Track 2 times and I took almost all freely available tests I could find. 

Below is extract from my score sheet:

I also took PMPforSure free 100 test and I did not like it. I think there was some error and it gave me 72%. While checking the answers I noticed some questions that I did not see during the exam. So I disregarded this exam attempt.

I did not want to push myself for any specific date until I'd feel 100% confident, but at some point I realized this is taking too long and I scheduled the exam even two weeks before my target date in mind :)

Last 2-3 weeks before the exam I read mostly PMBOK - this time it was much more interesting because I already knew the concepts and I was even finding some contradictions between PMBOK and Prep Guides.
Moreover, this reading PMBOK was very useful summarizing experience. 

I avoided any 4-hour practice exams for about 10 days before actual exam although I had some free samples left. I played with Christofer Scordo's tests (last ones and KA-based ones) where I would still get around 82-85%.
Each 4-hour exam would take me around two days to recover :)

Also I played with Farndales PDF document. It was quite helpful as well. All these previouse mock tests made me un-confident becuase of all these judgment questions which I would answer differently from the author. 
So while doing Farndales, I corrected some of my mis-interpretations caused by previous mock tests.
Although Farndales could also cause some mis-interpretations but this time I was ready for that and I would not let any mock test affect my morale :)

Anyway, I was not very confident until the exam :) 

• I would not recommend memorizing full ITTO although some parts could be memorized.
• PMBOK should be read at least once and probably used in general as a Reference Guide or Summary to refresh your memory.
• do all available free practice exams - there are so many available - I was very surpised thanks to this forum - I did not even manage to do all of them during the given time :)
• pacing yourself during the exam is very important. Use the Exam taking tips from Prep Guides. 

During the last hour of the exam I was worried I would not have enough time to cover all the questions so I had to speed up. Initally I was reading too much into the question trying to find tricks or hidden words - it took my time and efforts. However, I managed to answer all questions when I had around 10 minutes left which I used to review marked questions. During the review I pressed some un-intended button and I saw that only 3 seconds left so I spent these three seconds in relaxing mode :)

First, I got happy when I saw the congratulations screen.
I got even happier in a minute to see Proficient five times and I said to myself it is worth it :)

Thank you, all, for your contribution :)