Ron's Life

The first place we stopped was the Mall of America. Obviously this place has been one of the biggest tourist attractions in Minneapolis for a while. I’m positive we didn’t cover the whole thing even though we went back on Sunday for a more extensive tour. As soon as we landed, Eric told us that they were not picking us up and that we need to catch the light rail from the airport to the mall. Once there we would put our bags in his rental car and enjoy unlimited rides in the mall. I wasn’t sure what he meant by that, since I didn’t really know that much about the mall. To put it simply, there is an amusement park in the middle of the mall. It is currently a Nickolodeon themed park; previously it was Camp Snoopy.

I’ve got to be honest with you, those were some fun rides. I’m not sure which one was my favorite but I did get a kick out torturing Robert with endless 360 degree spins in the Brain Surge ride. And the spinning Avatar airboard was pretty fun too. The most awkward moment though was on the Fairly Odd Coaster when Seth and I were forced to ride with two 16 yr old girls. They were talking until we sat down. I felt like saying something like, “So do you girls ride roller coasters very often?” but I resisted.

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And right next to the theme park was the awesome Lego Store. I’d been to one Lego store previously and while it was pretty cool it was also pretty slow considering they had one other customer while I was in there. Based on my experiences at these two, it looks like, aside from having almost every currently available Lego product, each store has a computer station where you can design your own kit. Then you print off the required pieces and go buy them, as the back wall is full of individual pieces sorted by type and color. If I was a 8 years old I’d have probably gone nuts in there, and would’ve thrown a tantrum when I had to leave. After looking around at a few of the Lego sets, Mike wondered what the most expensive set was and I turned to the Star Wars section, because I knew it would be there. It didn’t take long as I discovered the Death Star. This bad boy was a cool $399.99. Asking the Lego employee he confirmed that it was “absolutely the most expensive in the store.” I asked if they sold many and he said they were happy if they “sold 2 in”… wait for it… “a day.” And he wasn’t kidding. I was in shock. When I worked at Toys R Us, I realize it is different, we didn’t sell nearly as many Legos as I would have liked. Kids today are missing out on awesome Lego fun. But he did say that they had a 10 yr old boy that had saved up his money for 2 years to buy the Death Star. It’s good to know that there are some kids, and parents that will allow it, that will save up their money to buy such an awesome toy that is not a video game.

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Overall the Mall of America is a worth a trip for the rides and the Lego store. Do it!

Tags: Minneapolis, Minnesota

This entry was posted on Tuesday, July 12th, 2011 at 2:04 pm and is filed under Awesome, Fun, Traveling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.