The mall is the stalwart spouse that hasn’t learned any new moves in a decade. It is owned by the Ghermezian brothers, who live in Canada and run a real estate conglomerate called Triple Five. They rarely talk to the media and declined requests to be interviewed for this article.

Recently, they upgraded the Mall of America’s movie multiplex, and in 2006 they dropped the Camp Snoopy theme in the amusement park after failing to reach a deal with United Media, which owns the rights to the brand. The park is now Nickelodeon Universe.

But the basic design and sales pitch of the mall are unchanged. The mall is still a huge rectangle, with the stores surrounding the park and the shopping areas divided into four sections  each with its own name, décor and background music.

As the publicist Dan Jasper explained in an e-mail message, the West Market  the hallway between Nordstrom and Macy’s  is supposed to feel like a European train station and gets smooth jazz. The North Garden, which connects Sears and Macy’s, is lined with trees and lampposts and is supposed to feel like an outdoor park; the retail mix skews toward teenagers and the music is described as “pop contemporary adult hottest hits.” South Avenue collects the upscale, chic stores and pipes in “rock adult album alternative.” East Broadway is supposed to feel contemporary and gets “pop adult contemporary/modern.”

Despite the different looks, and despite navigation maps on kiosks around the building, you never quite get your bearings. Several stores have more than one location  there are two Nestlé Toll House Cookies spots, for instance, and four Caribou Coffees  which gives you the impression that you’re lapping places you haven’t yet been.

The mall has skylights but, like a casino, has no windows and not a single clock.

“Why do we want you to know what time it is?” Ms. Bausch says with a smile. “We don’t want you to leave so we don’t want you to be in a hurry.”

Image Felicia Glass-Wilcox says her Chapel of Love is balancing, but barely. Credit... Caroline Yang for The New York Times

SPEND enough hours in the Mall of America and you wind up in a sort of fugue state in which the specifics of time and place turn fuzzy. The hope, one assumes, is that you’ll spend more freely in this alternative universe of nonstop distractions.