American Girl Washington, DC (Tysons Corner) 6/18/2011

American Girl Washington, DC


The view from the line

Almost there.....
We went to the Grand Opening of American Girl DC today.  The store opened at 9 am.  We arrived around 9:30.  We saw a huge tent outside and, of course, tons of girls, dolls, and their families in a HUGE line.  We got in the line, then found out that it was a line to get tickets to get in another line to go into the store.  Thankfully it wasn't too hot yet and everyone was cheerful and polite.  The tent had various activities and free items.  We got a free reusable tote, two little American flags, and a bag of tortilla chips from Chipotle.  There were balloon artists, caricatures, face painting, and a coloring area while we were in line.  Even though the line looked endless, it moved pretty quickly and we were in line less than 1/2 hour before we got our tickets.  We found out that tickets were being issued in groups of 200.  We were in group 7.  After we got our tickets, we had approximately one hour before our group was able to get in line inside the mall to go into the store.  So we got pretzels and visited the Lego store. 

Here are a few photos of the outside of the store on Level 2 of the mall.


Their own special lights outside the store
The indoor line moved very quickly and I was quite impressed with the entire process of getting tickets, getting into the store, etc.  When it was our turn to enter the store my daughter and I were given little booklets full of postcard-style inspirational sayings. There will be a photo of those a little later on in this post.  So keep on reading.  :0)


Looking in the window while in line

Inside the store


Julie's items always make me laugh, because they are considered historical
and thus make me feel antique too!
 















On Level 2, when you enter the store you are in the historical section.  There is a "specials" type section to the right with the only-available-in-the-store items.  We had good luck here with a short checkout line.  A little further back is the Kanani section.  Behind that are the elevator and escalator to go downstairs, then the mini bookstore and the Bistro.  Restrooms are to the left of Kanani's section, kind of near the elevator.  There is a Kanani photo-op shave ice booth.  We got right into it.  The only wait we had was trying to navigate around the register-to-win Kanani table. 

Aren't these some cute kids? ;)

Here are some goodies by the Bistro.  Yummy!



I LOVE Kanani's ukelele!

In the lower level are Bitty Baby, Bitty Twins, My American Girl, and a little Kanani section.  The create-a-tee for you and/or your doll is down there too, as well as the Salon!  Here are some pictures from the lower level, which was incredibly crowded while we were there.


Look!  New Bitty Babies!  Brown hair/blue eyes and a redhead too!  Love them!


Cute new outfits for the twins


I think the outfit on the left is new?


The Salon


I've read that there are some new today dolls.  I grabbed a few photos, but it was really, really, really busy in this section and I didn't have a chance to actually look at the dolls closely.  I'm embarrassed to admit that I did not even notice that there were new dolls.  I wasn't planning to buy any dolls on this trip, so maybe I was just avoiding temptation by not looking too closely.  We did come out of the store with a big bag full of goodies.  My daughter selected Chocolate Chip the dog and Kanani's accessories, which included another dog.  Alas, no doll for her.  We also got the items pictured below:

Matching girl/doll shirts

Must have the doll souvenir shirt!

The kids could make the booklet on the left.  The pink booklet is
what we received when we entered the store.  Finally, our ticket.

















Felicity, her accessories, and her paper doll
book for $100.  How could we (I) resist?






















Well, you can tell from these pictures that I did indeed end up buying a doll.  We lived in Virginia last summer while my husband did a rotation for work.  We visited Williamsburg while there and I bought a few colonial doll clothes patterns and some reproduction colonial fabric.  I guess it's time to break out the supplies and make Felicity some new clothing.  On a side note, I remembered her as having much more red hair than she does.  It's almost brown.  Oh well.


My final thoughts on today: admission was very well organized and overall, people were exceptionally polite.  There were very few whiny children or temper tantrums.  The store is much smaller than Chicago and New York.  It seemed like not everything was available.  The book section is very small in comparison to the new Chicago store. I still miss the old Chicago store.  You know, the crowded, dated, but somehow better in my mind store.  But I digress.  We noticed lots of new doll earrings.  There were sports-themed and animal-themed earrings.  I think there were many new styles of glasses.  There was a cute doll seat that hooks onto your luggage.  If you watched Shark Tank last night, you saw something very similar for real kids.  I absolutely loved Kanani's ukelele, but we didn't buy it.  She had a new outfit and I noticed a few other new things.  There are new dolls.  There were two giveaways to sign up for.  One was four tickets for the cruise in November and the other was for a Kanani collection.  I signed up for both.  I probably will not win.  :0)  We did not go into the Bistro.  We did that once in Chicago and didn't care for most of the food.  We did buy goodies from the bakery case and they were really good and priced more reasonably than the goodies we bought in NYC last fall.  They also tasted better.  That's it for now.  Thanks for reading!