Review: Forest Mall, Fond Du Lac, WI

My family and I had to go to Fond du Lac, WI yesterday for a dentist appointment. Since we were in the area and it would seem like a wasted trip if we just spent ten minutes there, we decided to visit the Forest Mall on West Johnson Street.

I was very impressed with it.

Our local mall is (being as nice about this as possible) run down. There are few stores in it and you can’t get into the parking lot without hitting various potholes. So, even though we have stores like Wal-mart and Shopko here, if we want to do any shopping at places like JC Penney, Sears or some smaller specialty stores, we have to go elsewhere.

In the past, that meant driving to Madison. But, I found quite a few things I liked about the Forest Mall (which is roughly the same driving distance).

First of all, I love the wide open space. We were able to walk from store to store and not feel like we were getting trampled. I could even let our daughter walk a couple steps in front of us or behind us rather than hold her hand throughout out of fear of her getting lost.

The other thing that impressed me about this mall is the selection of stores. I’ve been to other malls that I did no shopping in simply because I either couldn’t afford the stores or because they didn’t offer anything I would be interested in. This mall had a good mix. You had some more expensive stores, like Yonkers. But, I was also able to find some great deals at Kohls or Walden Books (where we ended up doing most of our shopping). Our daughter got to enjoy the arcade for a while; along with some mechanical rides in the main mall area.

I also have to say it was one of the friendlier malls I’ve visited. I’ve been in some where the employees in most of the stores are extremely rude but that wasn’t the case here. I don’t think I found one employee in any store that wasn’t anything but pleasant to talk to.

The selection of restaurants inside the mall was a bit limited (they had some bigger restaurants outside the mall but that was a bit of an inconvenience) but I think my only real complaint had to be the lack of bathrooms. The only one in the mall area is by JC Penney and there are some more inside a couple of the larger stores. I have a pregnant wife and 4-year-old daughter so that nearly led to an accident and I saw plenty of space where more could have easily been added. The map of the mall also seemed to be a bit inaccurate about the location of those facilities (either that or I was reading it wrong).

Overall, I think this was a great place to visit and I can see myself doing more shopping there in the near future.