I have a three-hour layover in Minneapolis a week from Tuesday. I get in at 4 in the afternoon and my flight leaves at 7. Would I have time to take the train to the Mall of America, or would rush hour make it prohibitive?
ETA: I’m not checking any bags.
Sure, take the rail.
wow! 11 minutes, that’s great.
looks like you may be checking bags on the flight out.
Yep, no problems at all. But be warned: It’s just, y’know, a mall.
Yeah. My sister’s been there, and I’ve been to the huge one in Edmonton. We both report: if you take every store you’ve ever seen in a mall anywhere, and put them all together in one really big mall, that’s all they are.
I don’t think three hours is really enough time anyway, when you start figuring in how many minutes it’s going to take to walk to and from the train at each end for a round trip, how long it’s going to take you to pass back through security, and so on. It’s not worth taking the chance of missing a flight. In my opinion, anyway.
You might be able to make it (holiday crowds may make it difficult, however), but I agree - I wouldn’t bother. Basically, take three or four standard malls and put them together and that’s what it is. There are many duplicated stores and the crowds will be bad, even on a weekday. I only stray near it to stop at IKEA, since it’s the closest one to central Iowa.
Plus, allowing a reasonable amount of time to get there and back and to get on your flight, you’re not going to see very much of it.
I wouldn’t. The light rail station is a few minutes walk from security. Security lines at MSP are seldom short - you can easily get stuck in a half an hour security line coming back. The end of the airport is a half hour away from security - if your plane is leaving from a close gate you are fine, if your plane is leaving from the ends of the earth, you will need half an hour of your layover time just to switch gates.
I plan on arriving two hours before my flight when I leave MSP. On a few occasions I’ve had less than plenty of time.
I once flew out with my sister - who was flying in from Fargo - she had 45 minutes between flights - and was running to make it. She didn’t have time to use the bathroom between flights. (Her plane from Fargo was a few minutes late to the gate - but planes to and from Fargo come in at that ass end of the airport.)
3 hours is pretty short. From the moment your plane parks & the 3 hour meter starts running it’ll take you 10+ minutes to get off the plane, another 10+ to walk to the train station, 10 to wait for the next train, and 10 to get to the mall. Then 5 minutes to walk from the station into the mall proper . You’ve spent 45+ minutes & you’re just getting there.
On the return trip you have the same 35 minutes to get back from the mall exit to the vicinity of Security. Then there is the security delay, (5 to 30 minutes), then 10+ minutes to get to the gate. They stop borrding 5-10 minutes before departure, so if you’re not at the gate by then, you will be left behind.
So you have a total time commitment of 90 minutes plus however long security takes. Assuming you plan for the almost worst case (30 minutes), then 2:00 hours are spent getting from your seat on the incoming plane to the mall & back to the gate area.
That gives you 1:00 to explore the mall. That means you can walk about 30 minutes away from the train station entrance/exit before you must turn around & head back. The place is a large square & you can sort-of cut across the middle, so you could walk outbound for about 40 minutes & shortcut back to the station, IF you were certain you wouldn’t get lost or dead-ended. If yo’ve never been there before that’s not a safe bet.
Speaking as somebody who used to waste time in airports for a living, in all I’d say a 4-hour layover would provide enough time for a visit to the mall. 3 hours is cutting it real tight.
I will also have to vote no on the timing issue. The airport is pretty honkin huge and getting from one gate to the other can often take several minutes. Then, there is the mall itself. Also very big and while easy to navigate, it is time consuming.
You could probably make it there and back in enough time, but you would have very little time to explore. Having worked in the mall, I can honestly say you aren’t missing much. I never could understand why certain chains have more than one store in the same building.
~Aqua