Governor’s Square — Attraction in Tallahassee

My wife and I took our one-month old daughter to Governor's Square the other night after reading online that a visit to Santa was free, and you were welcome to take your own photograph or choose from one of their available professional packages. Sure enough, many people had also shown up to see Santa and were taking their own photos. Santa looked tired, but the set-up was fantastic, so we were excited.

After waiting in line for over an hour, we had to leave and returned tonight to try again. This time there was a sign newly placed demanding no "personal photographs."

The photographers ignored us while presenting prices to people in line before us, but then snapped into action to scream at me and reach to seize my camera phone while implying that I was illiterate when I tried to document my wife placing our child on Santa's lap for the first time.

We went to the Mall to have a fun time, possibly spend some money, and enjoy the spirit of this season. Instead, we were humiliated, bullied, asked whether we could read, and told "Well, the Mall makes us do this, people were taking advantage, so we've just got to be hateful. And they're listening to me right now, so they've heard everything I'm saying to you."

Right now, having just returned home, this stings. It's sparked a mini-existential crisis over the meaning of Christmas, and whether schizophrenic holiday profiteers ought to be allowed to work with children as ambassadors of a sacred American tradition, but that feeling will pass, and we'll go somewhere else to see Santa, we'll get the picture we were hoping for, and if the staff is friendly and the work is solid, we may purchase a package. As it was, we were rudely dismissed and chased away. This apparently wasn't an isolated incident, it happened to the woman directly behind us as well. More shouts of "Can you not read? Don't even try it!"

More importantly, this is not what Christmas is about. This is shameful. I will never set foot in this mall again. I will never spend another penny at Governor's Square. I encourage others not to as well. I'm just glad my daughter won't remember this, and I feel horribly for the parents of the children in line who had to witness people being accosted and chased from the line over and over. I can only imagine how they'll squirm while contending with questions later as to why Santa's helpers were so mean.

Apart from being intuitively wrong though, this just makes bad business sense. Santa is a huge draw for holiday shoppers, when retailers make a good deal of their profit. Before our negative experience, I was considering walking around the mall and grabbing a few things.

The mall coordinates Santa's visit in order to support the season, draw shoppers, increase foot traffic to stores, and continue a wonderful tradition, but that logic has escaped some people at Governor's, namely their photographers, who apparently feel so little confidence in their own work they were not willing to let it stand against a grainy, poorly lit, 3 megapixel camera phone shot of a tired man holding a fidgety baby.

Shame on them. Don't waste...

Well everyone this is my official first time coming to this mall, and my second time coming to Tallahassee since Hurricane Michael, and last time it wasn’t for a very good reason, anyways I went with my family, I’m originally from Metro Atlanta now living in Panama City Beach Florida and overall I will say this mall reminds me more of Town Center at Cobb and Cumberland Mall with the layout of both Arbor Place and Perimeter Mall, only difference is: Like Perimeter Mall the food court is downstairs and the Macy’s is horrible in comparison to the one at Arbor Place, Town Center at Cobb, Lenox Square, Cumberland Mall, Mall of Georgia as well which is a major blow since that store used to be Burdines which is Florida’s version of Rich’s and the old Macy’s that used to be Davidson’s in my parents days, then the Dillard’s on the other hand is really nice compared to the one in Panama City Florida at the former Panama City Mall, it’s 3 floors, unless you count the parking deck, but in comparison to the ones in the Atlanta area especially the Perimeter Mall location and the Newnan Georgia location and Pier Park in Panama City Beach Florida this one isn’t quite as nice as those, but I mostly browsed around looked at Hot Topic, didn’t go in every store except bought a nice hat from Buckle, and didn’t go to JCPenney’s, and Sears was closed down for good, which no loss in my own opinion, it sucks like any mall used to have when they were still open, so I will be back, only giving this place 4 stars instead of 5 is because the Macy’s needs to renovate and they need more choices such as Belks or if the market could support it: a high end department store such as Von Maur like Perimeter Mall has for an example, I mean granted it Tallahassee already has a Belk, but it’s located in an area that is mostly in a isolated spot on the busy road leading to the Alapachee Parkway, but I will be...

After being in Tallahassee once again after years away I found myself at a familiar place. Just to see how it has changed and if there were any things that stayed the same. I started by journey by going in Dillards and I realized that I was having a flashback moment of the good times that I once had when I was a youth. How the attraction of the mall was to teenagers similar to the attraction of a moth to a flame. But as I was walking from store to store I couldn't help to think back on how good those days were. But at the same time a was aware of the reality that we are living in different times. Because each and every person had on face masks that scenery brought me back to reality that these are serious and troubling times. But there are a few places that we can go to get some relief from the troubles of the world one place is the church and another is the mall. Even if you don't buy anything from the mall but being in the presence of other people having fun and smiling and enjoying themselves does something to you to turn your day around. That is what happened to me and I walked around greeting and speaking to other people gave me assurances the everything is going to be alright and we can get back to normal life one day. But until then I took in the scenery, the smells and wonderful items that was for sell in each store and just embraced the moment for what...