Tuesday, February 7, 2023
When you spend money at the Mall of America pre-Christmas, you can earn rewards – tickets to Camp Snoopy* (the amusement park), Fish at the Mall** (the aquarium), Something Else***, or a mall tour. We picked a mall tour, because we love a tour of anywhere.
We were the only people who had signed up for today’s tour. We had two tour guides, who made for a very nice 90-minute walk-around.
There are 7 acres of skylights over Camp Snoopy that provide the only heating for the public areas of the mall. Each store has its own heating, and there is air conditioning throughout the mall, but there is no heating system. Sunshine and heat from people and lights are the only things keeping it warm.
There are 300 trees and 30,000 plants in the mall. There is a full time gardening staff, who were the only ones kept on during the closure during the pandemic. Girl scouts bring a gazillion lady bugs once/year to act as natural pest control. They use no other pesticides.
There have been over 9,000 weddings at the mall. There was a wedding chapel for over 20 years, which closed because the owner retired. There was an underwater wedding at the aquarium. There was a ceremony for several couples involving the original roller coaster. A guy named Dave picked a date to get married but had no one to marry. He had friends advertise – and got 600 applicants. They winnowed it down to seven – I am not sure how the finalist was picked, but the others were bridesmaids. They were married for 20 years before renewing their vows at the mall shortly before Dave passed away from cancer. A producer approached them about making a TV movie about them, but they declined. That producer developed The Bachelor instead. Huh.
When they built the new, steep drop coaster, they had a contest for school principals – who could ride the longest? They rode 18 hours/day and after nine days of riding, they awarded both of the last two guys. They both won a cruise. It is believed that neither of them has ever ridden the ride again.
The whole mall sits on 20 feet of concrete.
It is 523ft from the home plate marker (Met stadium was on the site of the mall before it was empty for 10 years and then some Canadians said, “Let’s build a really big mall”) and the Harmon Killebrew chair is on the wall over the log flume. That is how far he hit a home run – the longest in Twins history. It’s not the original chair that that ball hit. The ball hit and broke two chairs.
The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle spinny ride that I like so much is the only ride like it in North America. When it opened, the mall set a world record for having the most people dressed up like Ninja Turtles – 800!
The ground in the amusement park is uneven and rolls like being outside – to mimic being outside at a theme park. I love that so much.
There is a marker from the spot of the coin tosses from Met stadium football games in the middle of Camp Snoopy. Roger Staubach threw a 50-yard pass to win a game against the Vikings and when asked what he was thinking when he went for it, he said was thinking “Hail Mary”, a phrase we have all heard for last ditch efforts. It happened for the first time right there in pre-Camp Snoopy moments.
The west side of the mall was designed to have a feel of a classic railroad depot (the side that’s open to the roof, with lots of skylights and metalwork. It’s my favorite part of the mall. And I don’t love train stations. Something always goes wrong in train stations. I must just love the IDEA of train stations!).
We went backstage of the log flume. Paul Bunyan has lots of different outfits, all created by MN fashion designer Christian Siriano. If you stand Paul on Babe’s back, the two of them are two feet taller than the final hill on the ride. The biggest elevator on site goes from the basement to the main level and has held such things as cars, live reindeer, and Mark Wahlberg.
The transformers guy made out of Legos contains over 2.2million Legos. If only one person had put it together, it would have taken 59 years. The 2.2 million Legos would fill four semi-trucks. At one time, it was the Lego-y-ist statue.
There are over 550 stores in the mall. Thirty of them have been there since the mall opened August 11, 1992.
Approximately $2000/month is collected from fountains and donated to charities.
We met our guides on the north side of the mall, down a hall (mall sized, stores on the sides kind of hall, not a dark alley kind of hall) that neither Keith nor I had ever been down. Apparently, they host rotating exhibitions and butterflies and all sorts of stuff there. I do not have any idea how I do not know that. I am going to go look there when I am mall-ing in the future. There is a cool elf-guided Santa’s office place down there. All people with little kids should give it a go – minimal fee for some holiday fun.
*It hasn’t been called Camp Snoopy since 2006. It has been Nickelodeon Universe longer than it was Camp Snoopy, but a lot of people just stick with the original name.
**The aquarium probably has a real name. I don’t know it. [Keith: Sea Life Aquarium]
***There was definitely another option – that we were not interested in – but I can’t remember it. Maybe there wasn’t another option.
Fun fact I worked with the girl that married that bachelor. She was an RN with me. She left and went elsewhere and I lost tract of her but did hear about the renewal of vows and his cancer. So sad. They had little ones too.
Small world! Our guide said they had 4 kids.