I was speaking to the more common 70-100 storefront mall in a typical 20 - 50,000 resident town across America.

I don't doubt you at all - but I do think MoA is certainly an anomaly, as it's almost an amusement park in terms of attractions and draw. The shift towards entertainment "destinations" is certainly interesting, but again speaks to the fall of walk-in retail centers. As you say, most of your enjoyment came from actions far removed from the traditional shopping experience most of us probably grew up with at the mall.

Anecdotally, I have to agree with the post above. Been to dozens of malls in the past couple years, and they do in fact seem to be thriving.

Perhaps the indoor mall is more preferred in the northeast where I've explored most, as the cold winters and humid summers make it a preferable destination.

Then again, outdoor Santana row clones are also popping up everywhere, both in the northeast and in more temperate locales. Personally I think they're all doing quite well.

From my purely anedotal evidence, it's both. I've spent the last 10 years in the American West and Mid-West. There are plenty of malls that are literally being torn down, are half-empty, or have low-prestige businesses (exercise and martial arts, thrift shops, even museums). At the same time, some other malls are booming, fuller than I ever remember them being as a youth.

I don't know exactly what marks or causes the split, but it's very much there to my eyes.

In the UK, mega-malls are doing great whereas small ones are faltering.

I think it's because shopping is now an experience rather than a necessity: people go to mega-malls to eat out, see a movie, and have a look at shops where they may or may not actually buy anything. Large chains can then use their megamall-based shops as showrooms/customer-care contact point/"prestige" destinations. You only need one or two per city, of course, so they close smaller shops elsewhere which acted as anchors in smaller malls or retail parks.

eCommerce is increasingly centralising retail in the way IT centralised distribution 20 years ago. This is also why a lot of UK small towns are suffering (they are, in the end, primitive shopping malls).

Back in Wichita Kansas Town East and West malls have been in decline (the latter has been hit the hardest over the years) now that shopping centers in areas like 21st Street North and Maize have opened. It doesn't seem to be a uniform pattern across the country that malls are categorically dying, but that malls in towns like Wichita are basically dead or dying due to their location (Town East and West are located far away from the newest suburbs where as the shopping center I mentioned is less than a mile away from most of the subdivisions).