Minnesota's Mall of America New Year's Eve Festivities

A family oriented New Years' eve
Where do you go for a New Year Eve celebration if you have children? Let's face it: The majority of New Years' Eve parties are geared toward adults drinking and usually getting drunk. A family oriented celebration is hard to find. If you happen to live in Minnesota, though, you might be in luck.

Minnesota's Mall of America is the USA's largest shopping mall with a theme park inside the mall. Located in Bloomington, MN the theme park boasts an aquarium and a full size roller coaster. They also have the world's largest LEGO store complete with awesome LEGO art. The Mall covers 4.2 million square feet and employs about 13,000 people a year. There are 520 stores and 14 movie theaters. With nearly 100 different places to eat your won't go hungry. Take your most comfortable walking shoes because the mall covers of 5 miles of storefronts and that is not including going inside the stores. This is a quote from their website: "If a shopper spent 10 minutes browsing at every store, it would take them more than 86 hours to complete their visit to Mall of America"

Bring in the New Year with Nickelodeon
Mall of America is going to have it's own special brand of New Years' Eve celebration this year. The celebration will have celebrities in attendance and performing. Nickelodeon the cable channel, will be hosting the event. The celebration begins at 6pm on December 31 and ends at midnight. The event is defiantly family oriented with circus acts, magicians and live music. Characters from Nickelodeon will be on hand for the kids add to that the rides at the mall and your family will have a blast.

Where to stay
If you plan on traveling to the area there are many local hotels to stay at. There is a large assortment of types of hotels from casinos and resorts to rooms for the lower budget minded. You can also find a hotel right on their website and book a room too. Their website has a really nice section of information for visitors to the area. Just click on the "visitors" tab at the top of the screen for information such as the local airport renting a car and the distances to the larger cites in the area.

A word to the wise here, if you plan on going to the big celebration then it might be best to not to take your car. The only reason I say this is that on Mall of America's website they mention that there are 12,550 on site parking spaces. I am hoping that the mall's employees have their own parking lot because they mention they employ 13,000 people. An interesting bit of trivia I know but if you stay at one of the local hotels find out if they have a shuttle service to the mall.

For a family oriented New Years' eve celebration that is relatively inexpensive Mall of America might be just the place this year.

Sources:

http://mallofamerica.com/