The Florida Mall in Orlando: A Complete Visitor's Guide

The Florida Mall is the workhorse of Orlando shopping. It is not the most glamorous centre in the city and it is not the cheapest, but it is the largest shopping centre in Central Florida, it is entirely under a roof, and it has more for children to do than any other mall in the region. On a wet afternoon, a departure day, or any day when a group of eight needs feeding and entertaining in one place, it is the obvious answer.

It sits at 8001 South Orange Blossom Trail, on the eastern side of the tourist corridor and closer to Orlando International Airport than to Walt Disney World. That location shapes how most visitors use it, which is a point covered further down.

What is actually inside

Over 250 retail, dining and entertainment options, anchored by Macy's, Dillard's and JCPenney. The retail line-up is broad rather than specialised — mainstream fashion and footwear, electronics, beauty, toys and department stores — which is exactly what you want when six people need six different things and nobody wants to make three stops.

The part worth planning around, though, is the entertainment. This is where The Florida Mall genuinely separates itself from The Mall at Millenia and from the outlet centres.

Crayola Experience

Seventy thousand square feet of hands-on colour, and exclusive to this centre — you cannot do it anywhere else in Orlando. It absorbs a couple of hours easily with children who are too young for the bigger theme park rides, and it is entirely indoors.

The Play Park, which almost nobody mentions

Beside Crayola sits a refurbished Play Park offering over 3,000 square feet of nature-inspired play. This is the most useful thing in the building and almost nobody writes about it. When you need twenty minutes so that one parent can finish shopping, it is there — check on the day whether it is ticketed, because the centre lists it as an amenity rather than an attraction and does not publish a price either way.

And the rest

• American Girl, which for a certain age of child is the entire reason for the trip.
• Titanic: A Voyage Through Time, a walk-through exhibition rather than a ride.
• Game Over Escape Rooms, for teenagers who have run out of patience with shopping.
• Fun Factory, Game Park and Gatcha Arcade, plus Glow or Go — the arcade and activity cluster.

Eating, and why the dining pavilion matters

The Dining Pavilion holds 23 restaurants and eateries with more than 1,400 seats across indoor and outdoor areas. That number is the difference between a pleasant lunch and a miserable one when you are travelling with a group.

A conventional mall food court seats a few hundred and a party of eight ends up split across three tables or standing. Fourteen hundred seats means you sit together, and it means the lunchtime rush does not decide your afternoon for you. If you are only going to remember one practical fact about this centre, make it that one.

What is actually worth buying here

Two things, mainly, and neither is what people expect. The first is souvenirs. A character t-shirt bought inside a theme park and the same t-shirt bought at a mall are not priced the same way, and a family of five buying a memento each will notice the difference. The toy and character stores here carry a great deal of the same merchandise without the park mark-up.

The second is the things you forgot. Vacation homes come with a kitchen, which is wonderful until you realise nobody packed a phone charger, a swimming costume that still fits, or enough sun cream for a fortnight. A single stop at a 250-store centre solves an entire list, and it solves it faster than three separate errands closer to the villa.

What The Florida Mall is not is a bargain destination. Prices are ordinary retail prices. If value is the aim, the outlet centres are the trip you want and this is not it.

Doing it with children, in the right order

Most family visits here go wrong the same way: the adults shop first, the children run out of patience, and the expensive attraction everyone came for gets done badly at four in the afternoon by people who are no longer enjoying themselves.

Reverse it. The entertainment is the reason children will tolerate the rest of the trip, so spend it early while goodwill lasts, then eat, then shop with a group that has already had its fun. The Play Park beside Crayola is the release valve in the middle of that sequence.

It is fully indoors, and that is the point

The Florida Mall is enclosed and air-conditioned end to end. That sounds unremarkable until you compare it with the alternatives: both of Orlando's Premium Outlets centres are open-air, so shopping them in an August downpour means being in the downpour.

From May to October, Central Florida gets afternoon thunderstorms most days. An enclosed mall is one of the few plans that is completely indifferent to that, which is why this centre turns up on every local wet-weather list — ours included, alongside the indoor attractions worth driving to.

When to go

Opening hours are 10am to 8pm Monday through Thursday, 10am to 9pm on Friday and Saturday, and 11am to 7pm on Sunday. Hours shift around public holidays, so check before making a special trip.

1. 1Weekday mornings are the quietest window, and the easiest for parking.
2. 2Avoid a rainy Saturday. Everyone in Central Florida has the same idea, and the car park is the busiest it gets all week.
3. 3Late afternoon beats midday during peak season — the lunch crowd has gone and the evening crowd has not arrived.
4. 4If Crayola Experience is the reason you are going, do it first. Tired children do not improve as the day goes on.

Getting there, and the airport trick

From the Kissimmee, ChampionsGate and Reunion vacation home communities, allow roughly 20 to 30 minutes depending on traffic and time of day. It is not the closest shopping to the Disney-side villas — that title belongs to the outlets and the Kissimmee plazas covered in our overview of where to shop around Orlando.

What it is closest to is Orlando International Airport, and that is worth building into your itinerary. A late flight home is much easier to absorb with a final morning here — air-conditioned, everyone fed, souvenirs bought at ordinary prices rather than park prices — than with five hours of killing time. There is even a hotel on the property, The Florida Hotel & Conference Center, with 511 rooms, if a group wants to split the last night from the flight.

So which Orlando centre should you actually pick?

Come here if you have children with you, if the weather has turned, if you need to feed a large group, or if you are flying out later. Go to Millenia if you want designer labels and a calmer, more grown-up afternoon. Go to the outlets if the point of the trip is the discount and the weather is good.

Whichever you choose, the shopping is better when you can drop the bags at a house with a pool and go back out later rather than piling them into a hotel room. A five-bedroom home near Disney gives a family that space, and you can see the whole collection we look after if you are still deciding where to base yourselves.