As a college student home for summer break with an excess of free time last year I experimented a lot with getting the optimal yield out of my Netflix subscription. I too was experiencing frustrating wait times for new releases until I stumbled upon this neat little trick/glitch/who knows that resulted in me getting every single BR I wanted on release day for the rest of the summer! Note: this only works for movies that have yet to be released, not for movies that are already showing as long wait.
The steps are as follows:
Step 1. Add the movie of interest to your queue - availability column will show as "Releases on Blu-ray on XXX, 2008" (almost always a Tuesday)
Step 2. Figure out the transit time in number of days that it takes for a full Netflix "return-cycle." Your goal is to figure out on which day of the week you need to mail back a disc from your house so that Netflix processes and ships it one day before the release date.
Confusing? Yes! Example: "The Rock" is set to release Tuesday, January 8th. This means (at least for my Netflix distribution center) that Netflix will ship the movie to customers who request it on Monday, December 7th (so it arrives on release day - nice!). It takes 1 day for movies to make it from my house to a distribution center and be processed. So if I mail out the movie on Saturday, the 5th, Netflix will process it Monday morning (no mail on Sundays) and ship a new movie from the top of my queue that day.
Step 3. When the release date of the movie you're interested in comes along, bump the movie to the top of your queue.
Step 4. Return a disc from home as outlined in step 2.
Step 5. Enjoy!
Notes: It's been a while since I've tried this, and it's possible Netflix has caught on, but this worked flawlessly for me for three months and just worked again the other day, so I think it still works. I am fairly confident that I am not receiving preferential treatment because I have several long wait titles that refused to ship for months despite being on my queue for ages.
Good luck!