During one of the days on my trip to the East Coast, I went together with my friends to American Dream, the second largest shopping mall in the United States.
Because of my abnormal sleep schedule, I wasn’t able to wake up in time to carpool together with them from Burlington County to Bergen County, so I drove over on my own after I was ready to start my day. My GPS directed me to the Pearl Lot, so I parked there and started making my way to where my friends were, taking some photographs along the way.
They were playing Angry Birds Mini Golf, so I joined them and helped them capture footage of their gameplay for a video.
After finishing all 18 holes, we headed back out into the mall.
Our next activity was the Nickelodeon Universe Theme Park. It had an eerie vibe to it, which was probably attributed to the fact that there were not very many people there and a lot of the rides were out of service. My friends also apparently had some issues with management because their filming permit for American Dream allegedly does not extend to the theme park due to it being a separate and independent entity from the mall.
After a fairly underwhelming theme park experience, we headed back out into the mall once again to walk to our next destination.
Apparently American Dream has the one and only physical Mr. Beast Burger location, and my friends wanted to make a video of them trying every item on the menu.
I ordered a Nashville hot chicken tender sandwich for myself. The lettuce was shriveled, the pickles lacked juice, and the bun resembled a bun you’d find on the clearance shelf at your local grocery store because it is about to expire at the end of the day. With that being said, the chicken itself was unexpectedly passable. I probably would’ve actually enjoyed this meal if it was just served as standalone chicken tenders instead.
There was one final thing my friends wanted to see before the end of the day, so we headed back out into the mall.
My friends are video game YouTubers, so they wanted to see the Minecraft installation and take a picture in front of this tall, angry-looking shrub.
After a long day of filming and exploration, we parted ways and I headed back to the Pearl Lot on the opposite side of the mall to return to my rental vehicle, again, taking more photographs of interesting things along the way.
American Dream was strange. Maybe it was because we were there during the daytime on a weekday, and maybe it’s because I’m just used to stores back at home on the Las Vegas Strip always being pretty busy all the time, but American Dream felt way too empty compared to its size.