If you are all theme parked out and need a break, a great place to visit is a shopping mall. The first one we visited was the Florida Mall , situated along the Sand Lake Road and South of Orange Blossom trail and about a 20 minute drive from the Disney theme parks.
Everything you need is situated under one roof, so when time is of the essence when on holiday, this is an ideal shopping experience. It is the largest mall in Orlando and has some very useful stores for anyone wanting supplies for their holiday villa or for those bargains you cannot find at home. The best stores we found were Sears Roebuck, Dillards, J.C. Penney, The Pottery Barn and Burdines, but be warned, these stores are huge and if you want to scour the mall for those bargains, you will need more than a day. There are dozens of excellent smaller boutiques with unusual products, our teenage children especially liked Guess for clothes, and Aldo for stylish and trendy shoes.
The quality and price of American bed linen, quilts, (comforters in American speak) and other accessories is excellent, and it is well worth considering bringing some back to the UK. We found the same to be true of general household items such as kitchen utensils. Obviously make sure you have enough room in your suitcase.
There is an excellent Food Court with a selection of extremely good value meals. You can choose from whichever counter takes your fancy, so there are no arguments if you have a large family group, as to what sort of cuisine is eaten. You can choose from Chinese, Italian, Burgers, Fried Chicken, Vegetarian and many other speciality foods. Because the Mall is so busy the turnover of diners is quite high and means that all the food is as fresh as possible. We recommend that you pre-determine a point to meet if anyone of your group gets lost as this Mall is vast (over 250 stores).
The other great place to look in for excellent household items is to the left of the Saks 5th Avenue entrance and it's called Target . It is an American version of Matalan , but with much more choice and a lot larger. Target specialises in household products from beds down to knives and forks, and everything in between including DVDs, videos and clothing all at very competitive prices.