We began our taste of Minnesota at the Doubletree by Hilton hotel. Well actually, it was our third choice. We set out GPS to take us to the Holiday Inn Express of Bloomington (while still on the WiFi of our Holiday Inn Express in Iowa, since Iowa kills all cell phone signal). Now, one of the gambles we took by not booking anything in advance for this trip was not being able to find a room somewhere..and naturally, the Holiday Inn Express was full. So I called the Hilton that was across the street. Also full. After about 30 seconds of panic, my husband found this Doubletree a few miles away, so I called them. They had rooms available! The front desk lady told me I needed to make a reservation (despite being 2 miles from the hotel) so she transferred me to their reservation line.
The reservation receptionist had a very thick accent and was hard to understand at times. But one thing I did understand: she was determined that I was a HiltonHonors member and wasn't telling her. The call started with 'what is your HHonors number?' I told her I didn't have one and she said oh Ok, and tells me the room rate and asks for my HHonors number again. Again, I told her I wasn't a honors card member. So she goes on, taking our names and getting the information for the reservation "your rate will be $124 and includes breakfast, etc." ...and then asks for my member credit card number...again, I told her I wasn't a Hilton member and asked if we could stay there since we weren't members. She said 'yes ma'am, no problem'. We finally get the reservation made and my phone goes off with the email confirming it, and I go to tell her thank you and she is babbling on about how this weekend is double point weekend so I will get double points on my Hilton honors account and as I go to tell her (I'm starting to get pretty perturbed) she transfers me to another line to hear about all the wonderful rewards of starting up my own Hilton honors account. I just hung up. And if I end up with a Hilton honors account I will be deleting it. Geez!
So we get to the hotel and they welcome us with warm cookies. Ok, that makes me feel a little better. We get our room on the eighth floor and its pretty decent. Smells clean, nice big room, has a keurig with complimentary Caribou coffee, overall nice room. We walked to TGI Fridays for dinner and had a normal evening of watching TV the rest of the night. The next morning, we got up and went down to breakfast. There was a line, so we patiently waited our turn to be seated. Well, turns out, we weren't given the breakfast vouchers and so they were going to charge us $13/person to eat at their tiny buffet table. I tried explaining that we were told breakfast was included in our rate, but they wouldn't do anything about it. Luckily I had said something BEFORE we started eating, so we went away hungry and had an early lunch once we got to the mall. Now I remember why I don't stay at Hilton.
Anyways, we got to the Mall of America around 10am even though it didn't open until 11. We found a great parking spot on the lot and didn't have to park in the parking garage. To say this mall is massive would be an understatement. They have an amusement park in the middle called Nickelodeon Universe. Complete with roller coaster, ferris wheel, and log flume ride.
We had our early lunch at the Hard Rock cafe, and wandered around the mall for nearly 4 hours. My husband really enjoyed the Lego store.
They had a full wall where you could buy Lego's by shape and color. Or you could buy one of their cups and fill your own customizable Lego set. Pretty neat!
I enjoyed the Italian Gelato we bought on floor 3. We were going to do the mini-golf course on floor 3, but when we went back around to it the line was long enough that is just wasn't worth it. Right next to the mini-golf course was a place to take old time portraits but those were $55 a picture so we didn't do that either. Half of the mall smells of chlorine from the water in the log flume ride, but its not overpowering.
We got to see mall security in action! Someone set their backpack down while sitting on a bench waiting for their group to be done in one of the stores and they forgot it, so there was an 'unattended bag' left on floor one. They blocked off the entire area, had the people currently in the stores along the walkway that was blocked off blocked into those stores while the stores had to shut their doors until it was deemed 'clear', they brought in the bomb dog (who was adorable! I wanted to hug him and take him home with us!) And had security guards on each floor blocking off the areas in case something were to explode it might carry up to the upper floors. A backpack full of travel clothes turned out to be harmless, and after 20 minutes of shutting down part of the mall, all was well again.
Other than that, it was pretty uneventful. Cinnabon made the first two floors smell amazing, and overall the mall was worth a visit. If I was a shopper, I'm sure I would have LOVED it. Even walking around though, we got to observe people, which to me, is a good part of the fun. People are hilarious! We left the mall around 2pm to start heading home. Getting out of the mall was a disaster, but we made it.
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