“Honey? Why is there a $25,401,946 charge on our credit card?”
Minnesota may be nicknamed the “Land of 10,000 Lakes”, but this Big Thing To See is about as far away as you might get from spending time in this state’s famous Big Outdoors. In fact, what has been called “the Sprawl of America” disparagingly by some folks could easily be called the BIG INDOORS!
The Mall of America in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota, is the Largest Shopping Mall in the USA. It eclipses all of the other Big Retail Locations in the United States, except perhaps for King of Prussia Mall near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (That mall can claim to have a little more space, but it has over 180 fewer stores — and is 2 buildings instead of just 1.)
Photo by Michael Ocampo
The Mall of America, which opened in 1992 on the grounds of the old Metropolitan Stadium (former home of the NFL’s Minnesota Vikings and the Minnesota Twins of Major League Baseball), has 530 stores, over 2.7 million square feet of floor space for those stores, and Nickelodeon Universe — a 1.4 million square foot amusement park in its center!
Owing to its sports history, the mall has a plaque commemorating the exact former spot of Met Stadium’s home plate, and has enshrined one seat at the exact spot (height included) of a Big Home Run by Baseball Hall of Fame player Harmon Killebrew. On June 3, 1967, he hit an amazing 520-foot home run to that seat!
Photo by Tim Bartel
Over 40 million people visit this Big Shopping Mall every year… pretty impressive once you know that every other attraction in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul COMBINED draw only 18 million people per year! (And oh yeah, did we mention that there are only about 5 million people in the whole state of Minnesota?!)
To get to the USA’s Largest Shopping Mall, just drive your rental car over to 60 East Broadway, Bloomington, Minnesota 55425.
If you happen to book a car rental to pick up at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, then the mall is just a half mile south of the airport, on the other side of Interstate 494.
It’s less than a 5 mile drive from the airport terminal in your rental car to visit the Mall of America!
Don’t forget to tell ’em VroomVroomVroom sent you. And please drive — and shop — responsibly!!!
World Championship Wrestling at the Mall of America in 1995
