Wander Minnesota: Building The Holidays At MOA

What does it take to get this:

To look like this:

Lots of hours, lots of hands, and lots of hard hats.

Last week I visited the Mall of America a few times to find out something I've often been curious about: just how long does it take to put together those giant, beautiful trees in the Rotunda at the holidays?

(First, a caveat—I don't hold anything against the Mall for putting up holiday decorations before Thanksgiving. At least they waited until after Halloween, which is more than can be said for many other retail establishments. You know who you are.)

To get those gorgeous, 44-foot trees in place and decorated means machinery, and boxes.

There are workers who climb and wait.

Then they guide the tree pieces into place.

While others get the next layer ready.

Meanwhile, in a tunnel under Nickelodeon Universe, these await.

They have to be plumped—by hand.

Upstairs, the tree construction continues slowly. All those little squares on each ring? Those are electrical outlets.

After many, many hours, the trees are in full, splendid regalia.

A few Mall of America holiday décor facts for you:

• There will be 250 trees throughout the Mall
• Each of the giant Rotunda trees has 32,000 LED lights and 60 strobe lights
• There are more than 10 miles of curtain lights
• Each 44-foot tree has 385 branches
• Ornaments around the Mall will be either 5 feet in diameter, weighing up to 200 pounds, or 8 feet in diameter, weight up to 300 pounds
• It takes 5 workers more than an hour to hang each ornament

Not surprisingly, the holiday season is the busiest time of the year at the Mall of America. You can expect the parking ramps and much of the surrounding parking lots to be full by noon the day after Thanksgiving. But that's not even the busiest day—the two Saturdays before Christmas can have upwards of 150,000 people shopping.

If you'd like to see more about the work involved in sprucing up the Mall for the holidays, keep an eye on the HGTV program guide—they were filming while I was out there for a show on holidays around the world, which should air mid-December.

My thanks to Sarah Schmidt at the Mall of America for all the help in putting this together.

What else is happening in our state? Be sure to check out the 10 p.m. Sunday night WCCO newscasts, where you can learn more in the weekly segment, Finding Minnesota.