Overall Summary

My overall summary is that GVK is a great place to pass your time if not for shopping. Honestly, it does not have that many stores right now that you can have a complete shopping experience, unless you love Shoppers Stop and won’t mind buying everything from Stanza and Shoppers Stop. In my view, it needs to get some more stores in place before it blossoms in to a complete mall.

There is one more thing lacking in this mall. It's the lack of good Food courts. There is only one KFC at the moment and KFC mainly serves Chicken. I could not find a restaurant, a bar or a Pub within the mall, but, I was able to find a Subway under construction. So, that should provide a respite to the vegetarians out there. Also, I found an interesting banner called Cafe Rock opening soon. The slogan says something like they play Hard Rock Music or something. Let’s see what it has in store for us.

Once the above things are complete, we can think of giving it a slogan, "GVK One, A Complete Mall." OK. Enough of crap from me...

Now, let me rate everything on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest and 1 being the lowest.

Parking Facilities: 3 out of 5
Ambience: 3 out of 5
Fun Zone: 4 out of 5
Food Courts: 2 out of 5
Multiplex: 2 out of 5
Shopping Stores: 3 out of 5
Assistance from mall Staff: 3 out of 5

As you can see my ratings are pretty average, but it’s not actually that bad considering that it’s only been 4 days since the mall opened and there are plenty of new stores that are still not opened. There was one more floor which I found still to be in construction. I won't be surprised if a chain of restaurants, pubs or bars comes up there just like City Center. These are just a speculation from me, but let’s keep our fingers crossed. There is a lot more to come up in GVK mall. I will rate these things once again after a couple of months. You will then clearly see a difference.

Some Interesting Stores and Games

The Mini Golf Course:

There is an area on the ground floor that has around four to five mini Golf courses. Each Golf course would be around 15 to 20 feet in length. This would be fun to play when you are with little kids or with your girl friend. Fortunately, I have pic of it.


The WildCraft Store:

Although, I do not have a picture of this store, I found this to be a small but, unique store. This sell things like Victronix Swiss knives, Torch lights, Wallets, bags and water bottles needed for trekking and things like that. Basically they sell a lot of camping and trekking equipment. So, if you like buying such things, don't forget to checkout this store.

The Fun Zone

Apart from the regular videos games and other stuff which you can find at the Prasads IMAX, there were quite a lot of Fun and Entertainment things at the GVK mall which are unique to it. There were things that I had never heard of. They had something called a Shark Journey, Labyrinth and there was a Horror House which claimed to be the scariest in the city. There was also a 4D Ride, which I assume will be on the lines of 4D films in IMAX. Again, I will cover these after my next few visits to the mall. Till then enjoy the pictures.

The Cinemas (Multiplex)

The Multiplex ticket counter area was rather too small for a huge mall like GVK. Also, the entrance stair cases to the multiplex were very small and only those that had tickets were allowed to get in to that area. I will cover this area another day when I go and watch a movie.

Above is a glimpse of the ticket counter: As I said, its quite small.

The Biggest Store in the GVK Mall

Shoppers Stop:

This is the Biggest store in the GVK mall. In fact, it appears as if GVK mall it self was made for the Shoppers Stop. The shoppers stop exists on 4 levels (yes, you read it right) of the GVK mall. On each level they sell a different category of items. For example on level 4, they sell mainly Men's Apparel and on the 1st level its Babies and Kids wear. I do not remember exactly though.

Other Big Stores:

Neeru's

Bossini

Pepe

Stanza

Some more Interesting Pictures from GVK Mall

Some Interesting Ads that captured my attention:

The Opening Shortly Stores:

GVK Mall Ambience

Photography was not allowed within the mall, however, the rule is not regulated too strictly. So, I was able to take some Interesting Pics in the mall. Just check them out below:

Ambience: The first thing you will observe once you enter the mall is the pwoerful AC. You will never feel the heat within the mall. Since, it’s a new mall; you will find a lot of construction still going in some areas of the mall. Therefore, it is hard to comment about the ambience part. There are three different means to commute up and down, within the mall i.e., the staircases, the elevators and the decelerators and escalators.

There is a very large aquarium within the mall that attracts your attention for a while. This was especially a hit with a lot of Kids. I have posted soem pictures below:

The view of the Aquarium from the third floor

A Close up view of the Gaint Aquarium.

Hyderabad GVK One Mall Review

Today I visited the newest mall in Hyderabad, the GVK One Mall at Banjara Hills. The mall was opened on May 01, 2009, the Labor Holiday. I got a change only to see it today. I will try to cover all aspects of a Mall from Parking to Ambiance in this review.

I have decided to begin with the Parking facilities. So here we go...

Parking:

The mall has four underground spacious floors for parking. They have named these as P1, P2, P3, and P4. It has separate parking floors for two wheelers and four wheelers. However, I was not too impressed with the directions that lead to the parking lot. Once you park your vehicle, there are no sign boards to direct you to the lift or the stair cases. In my view, this is very important for a mall like GVK because the parking lot is huge. People can easily roam around trying to find a way out or just to enter the mall from the parking lot.

Unlike the City Center and the Hyderabad Central malls, the GVK mall charges for parking. It costs whooping Rs. 10 to park your two wheeler for 2 hours and Rs. 5 for every hour after that (I am not sure they will regulate that too seriously though). Although, I did not go in to the Car parking area, I am guessing it would be double the charge of Bike parking.

Since there were no directions on how to enter the mall from the parking lot, I had to ask the parking staff for directions. They vaguely directed me towards a lift. Along with me were bunch of other people who were waiting for the same lift to come to the P2 level, but the lift always came till the first floor and went back again. I then realized that there was something wrong with the lift. All the while a security guard was continuously observing us. I later found that he knew that the lifts not working properly. I wonder why he did not care to tell that for 10 minutes. Fortunately, a lady from the parking staff showed us a way to some other lifts that were working for a difference.

It took 5 minutes for me to go from P2 to Ground Floor or Zero Floor.