Mall of America

For my spring vacation this year, my family and I visited Mall of America in Minneapolis, MN. The drive wasn’t that bad since I spent most of my time watching movies in my DVD player. On our way there, we stayed at a hotel that had a really large water park inside. It looked like White Water. There was a Lazy River and a couple of water slides which you went down on yellow rafts. They also had a hot tub and a water basketball court.

The following day, we were on our way to Minneapolis and had a flat tire. Dad pulled off the side of the highway and we had to unload all of our luggage from the back of the car to get to the spare. The spare was bright yellow and very small which didn’t match the other tires at all. It was really ugly and looked like it belonged on a tractor, not our car. Fortunately, there was a place to get it fixed at the next exit.

After about an hour, we were on the road again. Once we got to Mall of America, we walked all around. The place was huge! Their website says each floor is ½ mile long and there were four levels. So, as you can imagine, our feet hurt at the end of the day! During our stay, we shopped some, went into the Amazing Mirror Maze, the A.C.E.S Flight Simulator, a huge challenge ropes course, the underwater aquarium and Nickelodeon Universe Amusement Park. One of the days, I went snowboarding at a nearby ski slope.

I liked doing everything, but I especially enjoyed the A.C.E.S. Flight Simulator. You sat inside the cockpit of an F/A-18 Hornet jet fighter and had a dogfight with others that were also doing the simulation. The cockpit was very small and cramped. My call sign was Viper. I did really good and even shot a plane down while I was out of fuel.

The “Flying Dutchman Ghostly Gangplank” ropes course was also really cool. They put this harness on you with a clamp on top. The clamp clips onto a rope above you and protects you in case you fall. The ropes course was 56-feet high and overlooked Nickelodeon Universe, the nation’s largest indoor family theme park. It was pretty scary, especially when you looked down towards the ground. In some places, you walked across boards. In other places, you walked across nothing by ropes. My knees were shaking at times, especially as I got closer to the top. Once there, you went out on this gangplank thing and sounded the horn. Ahhh, sweet success.