The highly anticipated shopping extravaganza has opened its door in the Greater Toronto Area today. Vaughan Mills is the first mall to open its doors in the GTA for over 14 years. While the grand opening was early in the morning at 8:00, I went to visit around lunch time to see what all the fuss was all about.

Divided into 6 neighbourhoods and anchored with the first Bass Pro Shop (Outdoor World) in Canada, this mall is the first of its kind in this country. The layout of the mall mimicks a race track in that the walkway is formed in a circular fashion lined with over 200 stores with the food court located right in the center of the mall.

Some of the larger stores included Winners Home Sense (a combination of the two separate stores), Design Depot (designer brand names at depot prices), Lucky Strikes bowling alley, a Nascar race track, and others.

As I ate my regular poutine and Mugs root beer from New York Fries (that was the shortest line of all the 13 food vendors in the food court), I watched an acrobatics show at the main stage in the food court, which had 4 large screen TV screens. I couldn’t sit in the car-chair that they had but that was OK.

An interesting observation I had made was the fact that they didn’t have certain types of stores in the mall. There were no banks, camera stores, or toy stores to be found anywhere in the mall. The closest to a toy store was the Build-a-Bear store but I can hardly call that a “toy” for all ages. No banks? There were ATM machines scattered around the aisles but that’s all.

I didn’t actually buy anything as I went with no particular need for purchasing anything. Walking around the race track it felt as though it was the last weekend before Christmas. People were flocking everywhere to see the mall for what it’s worth.

There is potential for this mall as there is still sections of the mall that have yet to open, in addition to some large land just outside the mall advertising commercial space. Further, no movie theatre is present in the area. The closest ones are located at the exchange at highway 400 and 7.