Vaughan Mills by chauffeured car

Vaughan Mills by chauffeured car: shopping days, Boxing Day and the Bass Pro run

Vaughan Mills is the mall Vaughan shares with the whole of southern Ontario: on a Saturday the lot holds plates from Ottawa, Michigan and New York, tour buses from Quebec unload at the entrances, and the Bass Pro Shops mezzanine has a queue. It sits just south of Canada's Wonderland on the same Highway 400 corridor, which is why the two are so often booked together, and its entrances are numbered around the ring road in a way that matters when a chauffeur is collecting a family with twelve bags. The mall's own site has the store directory, the hours and the parking map.

Getting there

From the 400, the Rutherford Road exit and the ring road; from Woodbridge, Rutherford east; from Maple, Jane south; from the VMC and the Highway 7 hotels, Jane north — five to ten minutes; from Thornhill, Rutherford west; from Pearson, 25 minutes via the 427, the 407 and the 400. On Boxing Day, Black Friday and the last two Saturdays before Christmas, the Rutherford exit backs onto the 400 and the ring road is a car park; the chauffeur comes in from Jane or Weston and drops at a ring-road entrance rather than joining the lot.

Drop-off and pickup at the entrances

The mall's entrances are numbered around the building, and the chauffeur drops at the one nearest the stores you want — the Bass Pro entrance on the north side, the LEGOLAND and family entrance, the entrances near the restaurants on the south. For the pickup, text the entrance number and the chauffeur is there in minutes, having waited in the lot rather than circling. On an hourly booking the chauffeur holds the bags between stores; the cargo bay of a Luxury SUV takes a serious Boxing Day.

The shopping day, by the hour

Visitors to Vaughan — the family from Italy, the cousins from Florida, the wedding guests with a free Friday — book a chauffeur for the day: the hotel to the mall at ten, the bags to the car at intervals, lunch at the mall or at a Woodbridge restaurant, a second stop at the outlet's competitors if wanted, the hotel at five. The Executive Sedan for a couple, the SUV for a family, the Sprinter for a group. The day rate applies after the minimum.

Boxing Day and Black Friday

The two days of the year when the mall's own parking cannot cope are the two days a chauffeur earns the fare twice: the car drops at the entrance at opening and returns for the bags when you text, and nobody spends fifty minutes in the ring road. Book early; those mornings are committed a week ahead.

Bass Pro and LEGOLAND

Bass Pro Shops' Vaughan store — the boats, the aquarium, the mezzanine — is a destination in its own right for visitors and for the fishing and hunting trade, and a pickup with a new canoe is an SUV booking. The LEGOLAND Discovery Centre is the children's half-day, usually paired with Wonderland or the Reptilia zoo on Rutherford in the same hourly booking.

Tour groups and corporate

Tour operators bring groups from Quebec, the northern US and, through the network, from abroad; a Sprinter or party bus from the hotel to the mall and on to Wonderland or downtown is a coordinated booking. Corporate accounts book the mall for visiting customers' free afternoons and for holiday shopping runs from the Concord offices.

Hotels and the airport

The Highway 7 hotels are five minutes south and the hotel-to-mall run is a fixed fare each way. Visitors landing at Pearson with a shopping day in the plan book the airport transfer to the hotel and the mall day separately; the travel desk books the hotel.

Which vehicle

The Luxury SUV for the bags; the sedan for a couple; the Sprinter or bus for a group. The stretch is not a shopping vehicle.

Booking a Vaughan Mills trip

In the engine: two one-ways for a simple hotel-to-mall day, or "hourly" with the start address, the start time and the hours. Add "Vaughan Mills — entrance near Bass Pro" or the stores you want in the notes.

The mall, for the first-time visitor

Vaughan Mills opened in 2004 as a "Mills" outlet centre — a single-level racetrack layout with themed neighbourhoods, anchor stores at the corners and a ring road around the outside — and has grown to nearly 1.3 million square feet with more than 200 stores, the largest in York Region. Bass Pro Shops' Outdoor World with its aquarium and boat showroom anchors one end; the LEGOLAND Discovery Centre, a cinema, the restaurants and the fashion outlets fill the loop. The mall's site has the directory, the seasonal hours and the parking map with the numbered entrances. It is five minutes south of Canada's Wonderland on the same Highway 400 corridor, ten minutes north of the VMC and the Highway 7 hotels, and twenty-five from Pearson, which is why it appears in so many visitors' itineraries.

A shopping day, as it runs

A family from Florida staying at the SpringHill Suites on Highway 7 books a Luxury SUV by the hour from 10:00. The chauffeur is at the porte-cochère at 09:55, Jane north to Rutherford and the ring road by 10:10, drops at the entrance nearest the fashion outlets, and waits in the lot. At 12:30 the family texts from the Bass Pro entrance with the morning's bags; the chauffeur loads them into the cargo bay and takes the family to lunch on Woodbridge Avenue, then back to a different entrance at 14:00 for LEGOLAND with the children, and to the hotel at 16:30 with the bags. Six and a half hours at the hourly rate, and nobody walked the lot with twelve bags.

Boxing Day, as it runs

The same family a month later, on Boxing Day: the chauffeur, knowing the Rutherford exit backs onto the 400 by nine, comes up Jane from the hotel at 08:30, drops at a ring-road entrance at 08:45 before the mall opens, and moves to a lot on Jane rather than the mall's. The family texts at 11:00 and 13:30; the chauffeur reaches the entrance each time in five minutes from Jane while the ring road is stopped, and the family is at the hotel by 14:00 with the day's haul. The mall's own lot is not entered at all, which is the whole strategy for the two or three days a year it cannot cope.

Tour groups and the network

Coach tours from Quebec, the northern US and abroad include Vaughan Mills as a shopping stop, and the network sends smaller groups — a family from Mexico City, a delegation from Germany with a free afternoon — to us for a Sprinter from the downtown hotels or the VMC to the mall and on to Wonderland or Niagara. The mall's tourism desk handles the group welcome; the chauffeur handles the road and the bags. Corporate accounts book the same for visiting customers' free afternoons.

The neighbours on the corridor

The mall shares the Highway 400 and Rutherford corridor with Wonderland to the north, the Reptilia zoo on Rutherford, the big-box plazas along Jane and Weston, the Vaughan Mills terminal for YRT buses, and the hotel cluster to the south; a chauffeur's hourly day often strings three of them together. The Wonderland guide has the park's pickup arrangements and the fireworks rule that also stops Rutherford on summer nights; the Maple and Concord community pages have the surrounding streets.

The mall's hours and the seasons

Vaughan Mills keeps mall hours through the year and extends them through December; Boxing Week and the back-to-school weeks in late August are the busy ones, and the outlet sales draw cross-border shoppers from New York and Michigan on the US holiday weekends. The mall's site posts the hours and the events. For a chauffeured day the timing that matters is the lot: before eleven on a Saturday it is fine, after noon the ring road slows, and on the three or four peak days it fails entirely and the Jane Street strategy applies.

Combining the mall with the rest of Vaughan

A visitor's day often strings the mall with Wonderland five minutes north, the Reptilia zoo on Rutherford, lunch on Woodbridge Avenue fifteen minutes west, and the McMichael in Kleinburg twenty minutes north-west; an hourly chauffeur does all four without a parking lot. The Maple and Concord community pages have the streets around the mall.

Cross-border and visiting shoppers

Vaughan Mills draws shoppers from Buffalo, Rochester and Michigan on Canadian holiday weekends and from Quebec year-round, and a visiting family from the US who flew into Pearson books the mall day from the hotel like anyone else; the Buffalo route is the reverse trip for Vaughan residents. For a visitor with an evening flight, an hourly booking that ends at the terminal — the mall, the bags, the 407 to Terminal 3 — is a common shape, and the chauffeur's timing works back from the flight.

The mall in one paragraph, for the notes field

"Vaughan Mills, entrance near Bass Pro, hourly from 10, family of four, stroller" is enough for the engine and the chauffeur; add "Boxing Day" and the Jane Street strategy is applied without asking. The mall's site has the entrance numbers if you want to be precise.

Book a Vaughan Mills day

The details

The ring road is one-way in places and the entrances are not evenly spaced; the chauffeur knows which entrance is nearest which anchor. The lot's far corners are where the chauffeur waits, not the fire lanes. Rutherford at Jane fails on the same days Wonderland fills it. And the mall's hours extend before the holidays; the site has them.