Health & Fitness
Parking Tips to Keep That Holiday Spirit
A brief detail of a visit to the mall during the holiday season and tips on how to park your car at the mall during the busy holiday season.
The following is inspired by a true series of events:
Last Saturday, while trying to get into the holiday spirit I thought it would be fun to spend a leisurely afternoon at the Natick Mall while my daughter met up with some friends. Our plan was to arrive at 2 p.m. and then she would have close to 2 hours to socialize and likewise I would have that time to do a little holiday shopping. I had to be home by 4p.m. to leave for an evening event.
So we get to the Nordstrom lot at 1:50 p.m. and I said go meet your friends while I park so you are on time. First mistake .... we pull into the Nordstrom's garage that said FULL at the entrance. Logic told me that the average consumer would spend 2 hours at the mall and with close to 400 or more spaces per level there would be turnover of spaces. Thus upon entering I thought, hmmm I would go to an aisle away from the main door and await a party heading towards a car. After following a few single people as they walked to a car it was discouraging when the aisle I was in was just a cut through to another row that I could not possibly get to. Getting close to 2:30 p.m. and reevaluating my strategy I decided to follow someone with a baby carriage as they wouldn't be able to squeeze through the cars and thus would walk the most direct route to their car.
Using that plan I followed the wrong person to a car. After fifteen minutes of unloading her carriage and loading her car she pulls out to the left where I am. Proudly I have my directional on and am in place to pull in when a carload of teens sneaks into my space from the back right. I was flabergasted!! I beeped my horn at them and gave them disappointed looks. They laughed and sat there yelling “HA HA we have a space and you don’t!" I searched for the mall security patrol and complained about this rude behavior and he said there is nothing they can do about it. I argued that it is terrible that they can’t ticket or penalize someone for rude behavior.
Finally giving up on parking decide to head across to the strip mall with a plan to return to pick her up at 4:00 p.m. and even that took an extra fifteen minutes to navigate back and forth. By the time I arrived it was close to 3:20 p.m. and thus I ended up with about 10 minutes at Dicks across Route 9 and didn’t even have time for a run into Starbucks as planned.
As I am heading back to the mall to pickup my daughter my husband called and said we need to be ready to leave for our party in 15 minutes. It was already approaching 4:00 p.m. as I drove back on Speen Street.
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Well I learned my lesson to stay away from the mall on a weekend before Christmas in December. I did however need to return to the mall on Monday morning and found a space right away.
So my tip of the week is to read the attached article from the Wall Street Journal for parking strategies and avoid the malls on the weekend.