A Family Trip To Mall of America

One of my life long dreams has been to visit Mall of America.

I love to shop. And then shop some more. And maybe a little bit more after that, if you don’t mind.

The thing is, Mall of America is about an eight hour drive from my house. That’s a really long time to drive, you guys. Especially when you have tiny humans in the backseat.

But, you know, I didn’t even hesitate when I was asked to drive out to Mall of America for a sponsored trip to check the place out. I mean, really. Crossing something off the bucket list. Let’s do this.

I dragged my mother-in-law along with me, and by dragged I totally mean that she jumped in my suitcase and refused to get out unless I brought her along. She likes to shop too.

We woke up at o’dark thirty and hit the road.

Um, you guys? Totally worth it.

I’ve never even been to Minnesota before and I pretty much saw nothing but the inside of MOA while we were there! It’s huge. I mean, I know. You’ve all heard how big it is, but you guys. I was there for two days and I legitimately did not see the whole mall. Had the whiny short people (aka my children) not been there, I probably would have made it a bit further, but the thing is, I LOVED taking them with us!

We stayed at the Radisson Blu, which was the best idea ever (it should be noted that I didn’t make this decision…it was made for me by MOA™, but it was still a really good decision.)! The hotel is directly connected to the Mall, so I’m not even kidding when I say that we didn’t leave the Mall once during our stay. It was so fantastic to be able to head back to the room to drop off our bags or take a quick break throughout the day. Because, believe me, we needed breaks. Lots of them.

I don’t think I’d attempt MOA with kids if I weren’t staying at the Radisson Blu. They needed those sporadic moments of downtime throughout the day and so did Mama!

After checking in we were greeted with an awesome goodie bag so that we could fully enjoy MOA and what it had to offer. I was so excited about the Nickelodeon Universe® wristbands they gifted us! A theme park…in the Mall!

So, what did we do during our stay?

Roller coasters! We rode them!

Okay, no.

We rode one.

Then my daughter looked at me with her sad eyes all full of distrust and told me that she was never getting on another ride with me again. I may have underestimated just how awesome an indoor roller coaster could be. Whoopsies?

We ate. A lot.

My son insisted that we stop at Famous Dave’s for lunch. He’s a barbecue freak.

We had the Rainforest Cafe for dinner (pro tip: the kids menu has a little coupon for free children’s admittance to the AMAZING SEA LIFE Minnesota Aquarium® located one floor below the restaurant!) and then hit the food court up the next day for a quick lunch break. I ate at the ChikWich. It was, dare I say, better than Chik-Fil-A. Sorry, but I kinda love greasy fast food sometimes, okay?

Anyway, besides eating and riding roller coasters, we shopped! I won’t go in to the details there, because I’m sure you’ve all shopped before. I will say, though, that there is no tax on clothes in Minnesota (awesome!) and that the prices were comparable to the shops in my hometown.

They had a really cute miniature golf course, but we ended up skipping that. The kids were so tired of walking that we didn’t feel up to it after shopping all day. If mini-golf is your thing, I’d suggest hitting it up early, before little feet start to ache.

Of course, it didn’t matter how bad our feet were hurting, we rocked the Amazing Mirror Maze. Have y’all ever been in one?

Seriously, they are my favorite thing ever. It’s so crazy how difficult they are. We had a blast.

If you do go to MOA, be sure to hit that place up, even if you don’t have kids with you! I enjoyed it just as much as they did.

We had some cupcakes delivered to our room from a sweet little cupcake shop and holy heck. The frosting on my cupcake was literally the best frosting I’ve ever put in my face. It was just the sugar rush we needed to head back out and shop some more!

I think going without the kids would be a completely different experience and one that I’ll hopefully get to have someday, but going with the kids was so much fun. I don’t bring them to our home mall that often because they just aren’t interested.

Mall of America is truly a family vacation destination! I wouldn’t hesitate to take the kids back and enjoy it all over again!