Shanghai BarbieWorld!

Ok, this was a somewhat random stop on our part - especially since my two girls never ever really liked Barbies and we don't have one anywhere in our house at this point in time.

But it's the world's first and only Barbie World!  How could we miss that?!  To be honest, I was curious about the experience - wondering if it was as immersive as the American Girl stores.  And being a connoisseur of retail experiences, I dragged my girls along with me.

First of all, it's totally unprepossessing from the street.  You actually enter something that looks like an office building, and there is a single escalator from the lobby.

Here's where the pink started.

Funnily enough, the girls were ahead of me in the escalator and when they got to the top, the both turned and their jaws just dropped.

It was a giant spiral staircase with hundreds of pink Barbies and in general, just an explosion of pink everywhere!

The Barbie Design Studio where you could supposedly design your own Barbie turned out to be a bit of a dud.  You really just picked the accessories that you could have with one of 5 standard Barbies.  Not the customized experience I thought it would be.  Although the Design Studio was pretty cool looking.

There was also a number of limited edition Barbie displays.  I especially liked these two - the Kate Spade and Lilly Pulitzer Barbies!

And finally, the Barbie Cafe (alas we did not partake).

By the way, the store was not terribly crowded but the number of Asian adult females greatly outnumbered the children in attendance.  I may have had their target demographic wrongly pegged!