East Rutherford, New Jersey · four visits, 2022–2025
Field notes
American Dream took sixteen years to open. Here’s a look inside the mega-mall.
It was proposed in 2003 and opened, sort of, in 2019 — two attractions and not a single shop. I first walked in on New Year’s Day 2022, twenty-six months late, and I have been back three times since. Each visit a bit more of it was switched on. This is what a five-billion-dollar building looks like while it is still becoming itself.
Before any of my visits
Sixteen years of nearly opening
This building stood beside the stadium for most of two decades without a door opening. It changed its name, its owner and its opening date so many times that the schedule stopped meaning anything. Here is the short version.
The Mills Corporation proposes Meadowlands Xanadu on a patch of swamp beside the stadium. Wikipedia
Groundbreaking. The budget is two billion dollars and the opening is projected for 2007. CNBC
Construction stops. Lehman Brothers’ collapse has taken roughly half a billion dollars of funding with it. Wikipedia
Snow collapses the roof of the unfinished indoor ski slope. You could not write it. CNBC
Triple Five — the family behind Mall of America — takes control and renames it American Dream Meadowlands. “Meadowlands” is not dropped until October 2019. Wikipedia
It opens. Two attractions: Nickelodeon Universe and The Rink. Not one shop. American Dream press release
Twenty weeks later it closes for the pandemic, with the theme park and the ski slope the only things operating. Forbes
It reopens on 1 October with the water park and about seventeen shops — the first retail tenants the building ever had. Jersey Digs
It is roughly three million square feet. Wikipedia It was designed deliberately backwards: about fifty-five per cent entertainment and dining, forty-five per cent shops, where malls twenty years earlier had run at about eighty per cent shops. Construction Dive That is the bet. A mall you go to for a reason other than buying a jumper.
Visit 011 January 20223:27pm – 7:05pm
A ski hill nobody was allowed on
Almost everybody in my photographs from that afternoon is wearing a mask. That is January 2022 for you. The mall had been open for twenty-six months and had spent a good chunk of that shut, and it still had the echo of a building that had not filled up yet.
Then there was the snow. Big SNOW is a real ski slope, indoors, with real manufactured snow on it — the first one in North America. Wikipedia I stood at the glass and looked at a perfectly groomed, completely empty hill with a barrier across the bottom reading LIFT CLOSED. I assumed it was shut for the holiday. I could not really feel the cold coming off it — not particularly, anyway.
It was not. A fire had started at the top of that slope in the early hours of 25 September 2021, caused by an electrical fault. Nobody was hurt, because the place was closed. It stayed closed for eight months and did not reopen until 27 May 2022. News 12 New Jersey It was a ski mountain in the middle of a recovery I knew nothing about.
The rest of the afternoon was the mall doing the thing it does, which is refuse to be one thing. An ice rink. A wall of Among Us toys. A balloon cockatoo in a face mask outside a massage-chair shop. A figure in a red Squid Game guard costume, promoting a booth. I could not tell you which promotion — I have since gone looking and there is no record of a Squid Game event at American Dream, in January 2022 or ever.
For the record, I am exactly the audience that costume was aimed at. I have since done the Experience in New York, a Red Light Green Light party and Squid Game Virtuals in Paramus. In January 2022 I just walked past a guard outside a luggage shop and took a photograph of it.
Those dolphins are skate-aids: you hold the fin and push. I filmed it from the side rather than getting on it, which is a sentence that describes most of my relationship with this building.
Tap any frame to see it properly.
Visit 0223 March 20245:31pm – 6:02pm
Lasers, and the voice of a generation
Two years on, the building had noticeably more going on in it — and the first thing I walked into was a queue of grown adults waiting to meet the man who sang the Pokémon theme tune.
That is Jason Paige. He recorded the first English-language Pokémon theme — the “gotta catch ’em all” one — and has since sung with Blood, Sweat & Tears, Foreigner and Aerosmith. Wikipedia His banner said TODAY 11–5 and had been signed across the top.
I met him, and I follow him on Instagram. What I did not expect was how genuinely passionate he still is about that song, decades on.
The rest of that evening was ACTIVATE, which opened here in July 2023. NJ 101.5 It is a corridor of small rooms, and each room is a game made of light: a grid of lasers you have to get through without breaking a beam, a floor of tiles that lights up and wants you to stand on the right ones, a wall of buttons that punishes you for being slow. You play against a clock, in the dark. The wall said 573 when we stopped.
Nine rooms when it opened. PR Newswire Today, teams of two to five and at least forty-five minutes of gameplay. ACTIVATE American Dream It now sells an all-you-can-play pass rather than the timed slot it opened with, and it runs 10am to 9pm most days, until 10pm on Friday and Saturday. ACTIVATE American Dream I am not going to print a price — they do not publish one, and any number I put here would be wrong by the time you read it.
Four of those are my own footage, and they play. Hover one on a desktop and it previews; tap it and you get the whole clip with sound.
Visit 034 January 20258:00pm – 9:40pm
Out with six seconds left
The Escape Game runs seven rooms here, from eight in the morning until midnight, which is an unusual thing for a mall to contain. The Escape Game New Jersey Ours was Special Ops, and the board said 00:06.
We did it with a group we did not know. They did not speak much English, which made it a little more challenging.
The two with me are Schatze, who I have known since we were children, and her husband Mikael. She lives in Europe now, so when she is in the States we go and do something rather than sit and catch up — this, and the Squid Game VR place in Paramus, where Mikael beat us both.
We ate at MrBeast Burger, which is a real restaurant here rather than one of the app-only ghost kitchens. Its opening in September 2022 drew thousands and the State Police were called. Fortune On a Saturday night in January: pink and yellow stripes, arcade machines along one wall, a cartoon dog on the doormat. It was good, which I say as someone with no neutrality left on the subject — I watch his videos, and I later met him at a secret Starbucks in New York.
Visit 042 February 202511:14am – 12:44pm
A purple lemonade and my own name on a sign
The fourth visit was a late breakfast and a wander, with no ticket to anything.
I had a Midnight Lemonade. The board says butterfly pea flower over homemade lemon syrup; the cup goes deep purple at the top and clear at the bottom, and it cost $7.99, which the board will also confirm. I have lost the name of the place — I photographed the menu board and the drink, and never the sign over the counter. Then a donut from somewhere calling itself Ugly Donuts & Corn Dogs, whose box lid says “a bite to remember”.
And then, in a memorabilia shop, a framed pair of Rocky Balboa’s shorts — signed, star-spangled, under the word ROCKY. It was epic to see it right there in front of me. I wish I had enough money to buy the pair of signed shorts purely for laughs after putting up with a lifetime of Rocky Balboa jokes.
It was a pop-up, in for that weekend only.
Still opening
Twelve things that opened here, eventually
American Dream did not open. It has been opening, one attraction at a time, for seven years. Here they are in order — when each one arrived, what it costs today, and whether I have actually done it. Mostly I have not.
Nickelodeon Universe
Not yetBilled as the largest indoor theme park in the Western Hemisphere, and the first thing that ever opened here. American Dream press release
The Rink
Filmed it, Jan 2022NHL-size, and it opened the same day, into the same empty building. American Dream press release
DreamWorks Water Park
Not yetPromised for November 2019. Arrived ten months late, on the day the first shops finally opened. Jersey Digs
SEA LIFE Aquarium
Not yetOpened the same day as LEGOLAND. A combined ticket for the two starts around $35.99. SEA LIFE New Jersey
LEGOLAND Discovery Center
Not yetLast entry is 4pm and it closes at 5:30pm, hours before the mall around it. LEGOLAND Discovery Center New Jersey
MrBeast Burger
Ate there, Jan 2025The opening drew thousands, and the State Police were called. Fortune
ACTIVATE
Played, Mar 2024A corridor of small rooms, each one a game made of light, played against a clock in the dark.
NJ Hall of Fame
Not yetTen thousand square feet of Jersey, on Level 3. Danny DeVito appears as a hologram. Real Estate NJ New Jersey Hall of Fame
Two ticks, and I have earned neither of them very hard: ACTIVATE and a burger. Two more are things I looked at rather than did. Everything else on that list I have still not done, after four visits. Prices checked 15 September 2026 and they move about, so treat them as a shape rather than a quote.
The other American Dream
It works as a day out. It is failing as a bond.
American Dream cost somewhere around five billion dollars to build. Yahoo Finance This is the part the day-trip guides skip. Two things are true at once here, and the second one is getting worse.
The good news first, because it is real: visits and sales climbed year on year from 2021 to 2024, and leasing went from 77 to 87 per cent over the same stretch. Commercial Observer It was still 87 per cent in June 2025. The Ridgewood Blog The average visit runs about 125 minutes, which is very long for a mall. Commercial Observer Triple Five’s chief operating officer has said the place runs “from Hermès to Primark and everything in between”. Bisnow As a place to spend an afternoon, it is working.
What the 2017 bond documents projected American Dream would earn in rent and attractions in 2023. Yahoo Finance
What it actually earned that year. Yahoo Finance
What the property was assessed at in early 2025. A borough reassessment cut it to $2.5bn in May. The Bond Buyer
What a New Jersey tax court valued it at that July — seven months, half the value. The Bond Buyer
The yearly gap between what the PILOT bonds need in interest and what the mall’s payments now produce. The Bond Buyer
Visits in the twelve months to October 2024. The original projection was forty million a year, though the two are not necessarily counted the same way. Commercial Observer
In February 2026 the trustee for the bondholders sued both the mall’s developer and the Borough of East Rutherford, alleging a coordinated effort to collapse the building’s valuation. The mall calls the suit a deceptive attempt to overturn a lawful court decision. Bisnow Meanwhile the reserve that covers the bond payments was drawn down to under $2.4 million in December 2025. The Bond Buyer
None of that ruins a Saturday, and none of it is new. In 2022 an architectural survey of the building counted roughly one storefront in three standing empty. The Avery Review In the same period management was publicly claiming more than 85 per cent occupancy, while bond filings dated 1 January 2022 showed 77 per cent leased, or 82 counting pending deals. Forbes Leased is not the same as open.
“It would have been much better if American Dream had burned down or a hurricane had it, financially.”Kurt Hagen, a Triple Five executive, quoted by Commercial Observer in November 2024. Commercial Observer
If you go
The five things I wish someone had told me
If you are working remotely out of New York and you want a cheap, strange, entirely indoor day that is not another museum, this is thirty minutes from Port Authority. Just do not wing the transport.
$5 plus tax for the whole visit, and the first fifteen minutes are free. On a Jets day the outer lots become stadium lots at up to $75, $60 for a Giants game, but validating inside an attraction keeps you at $5 for up to three hours. American Dream help centre
The 355 leaves Port Authority Gate 305 and takes under half an hour. At weekends it runs hourly. On a weekday there are exactly two departures, 10:00 and 12:30, coming back at 19:00 and 21:30. Miss the last one and you are getting a car. NJ Transit
There isn’t one, most days. The Meadowlands line only runs for events expecting 50,000-plus people, and the daily service promised for the 2019 opening never happened. NJ Transit
Big SNOW sells no tickets at the door at all — it is advance-only, non-refundable, and last check-in is two hours before closing. Big SNOW American Dream
Bergen County’s blue laws still ban Sunday clothing sales. The attractions run; the apparel shops are shut. Bisnow
One more thing worth knowing: the headline attractions are ticketed separately and run from about $20 to about $79 each, so a day doing three of them is a different kind of day to a day doing one. Tripster
Next time
Four visits in and I have still not done the good bits
That is the strange trick of this place. I have been four times across three years and my photographs are of balloons, donuts, a closed ski slope and a queue. The headline attractions are all still ahead of me, which means there is a fifth visit coming.
- Actually get on the snow at Big SNOW, in a month when it is warm outside, purely for the absurdity of it.
- Ride the Dream Wheel. It is 300 feet up, 27 gondolas, and a turn takes half an hour. Patch
- Go back to ACTIVATE and beat 573.
- See Dream Live, the three-thousand-seat theatre they announced in April 2026 — the newest thing in a building that has been opening since 2019. NJBIZ
See you on visit five.
Everything I checked
- CNBC — timeline of how American Dream got built (22 Oct 2019)
- American Dream press release — Nickelodeon Universe and The Rink open (25 Oct 2019)
- Forbes — American Dream closes for coronavirus (13 Mar 2020)
- Jersey Digs — American Dream reopens with the water park and more stores (Oct 2020)
- Big SNOW American Dream — official site, slope access and hours
- News 12 New Jersey — Big SNOW sets reopening date after the fire
- Patch — 300-foot Dream Wheel gets an opening date (30 Mar 2022)
- NJ 101.5 — ACTIVATE opens at American Dream (31 Jul 2023)
- New Jersey Hall of Fame — Entertainment and Learning Center
- The Escape Game New Jersey — rooms and hours
- Commercial Observer — American Dream, retail recovery and debt (20 Nov 2024)
- Forbes — the numbers do not add up for American Dream (6 Feb 2022)
- Yahoo Finance — American Dream’s value cut (4 Jun 2026)
- The Bond Buyer — PILOT holders sue the mall and the borough (9 Feb 2026)
- Bisnow — bondholders sue American Dream over the valuation (9 Feb 2026)
- NJ Transit — getting to American Dream
- American Dream help centre — how much is parking
- Tripster — American Dream attraction prices (updated 8 Sep 2026)
- LEGOLAND Discovery Center New Jersey — tickets
- SEA LIFE New Jersey — tickets and hours
- Construction Dive — construction wraps on American Dream (19 Dec 2019)
- ROI-NJ — Sesame Street Learn and Play opens 16 Nov 2024
- NJBIZ — Dream Live performing arts centre announced (16 Apr 2026)
- Wikipedia — Jason Paige
- The Avery Review — American Dream (Issue 59, 2022)
- Wikipedia — American Dream (shopping mall)
- Wikipedia — Big Snow American Dream
- GetYourGuide — American Dream entry tickets (checked 15 Sep 2026)
- NJ Family — Sesame Street Learn and Play reopens after a revamp (Feb 2026)
- NJ Transit — the Meadowlands Rail Line
- Fortune — MrBeast Burger’s opening draws thousands (5 Sep 2022)
- Bisnow — American Dream and the 2026 World Cup
- Bisnow — Triple Five still dreams big as occupancy hits critical mass (5 Dec 2023)
- The Ridgewood Blog — an $800m drop in property value amid leasing woes (3 Jun 2025)
- ACTIVATE American Dream — official location page, hours and the all-you-can-play pass
- ACTIVATE American Dream — parties and groups
- PR Newswire — ACTIVATE brings gaming to American Dream (Aug 2023)
- Real Estate NJ — the New Jersey Hall of Fame opens a 10,000 sq ft learning centre
Prices, hours and opening dates checked 15 September 2026. American Dream’s own site would not give up its prices to anything but a browser, so the ticket figures above come from the operators themselves where they publish them and from a dated third-party list where they do not. Check before you pay.
