Excellent info! I take it you've driven this route a couple times?
Thanks to the both of you. What's the deal for parking? I assume any garages are gonna cost me an arm and a leg. I'm used to pleasant CT malls with plenty of free outdoor parking lots. I have no idea if the mall area is typically super congested.
Unless you park in the "premium parking" or valet, it's free.
I did a scouting run this afternoon while I was over at Home Depot and took some pictures...
Just to flesh it out some more:
After you exit I-90 (exit 13), you'll go through the tolls, and then immediately afterward you'll need to bear left onto RT-30 east. In typical Massachusetts fashion, you'll have barely enough road to make this maneuver without enraging everyone else around you. As their horns blare and profanities fill the air, just take a deep breath and know you'll be placing your reservation within a few short minutes.
After merging onto RT-30, turn right onto Speen Street (first major intersection). About a half mile down that road is a traffic light next to the Nieman Marcus building. Turn right there onto the mall access road, bear right at the first rotary, go under the pedestrian bridge, and at the next rotary, take the second exit (at about 10 o'clock). At this point, you'll see Macy's on your left, so take your next left and find parking. Enter through Macy's, make your way to the left into the main mall, and the Tesla store will be a few storefronts down on your left. (There's a Starbucks a little further down to the right, FWIW.)
If you're a visual person, you can actually drive the above route in Google Streeview,
And for the visual people:
After you turn right onto Speen Street, you're looking for the traffic light immediately before Nieman Marcus (
after you pass the Home Depot light, with HD on the left and the EZ Storage on the right). Turn right at this light, just before Nieman Marcus:
If you're planning to show up early, don't go to the rotary and main entrance as Bokonon suggests above. Turn left into D parking that is just ahead (~100 yards):
When you turn into the garage, there's a fork. You can go left (up) or right (down). Go left, up to level D2:
At the top of the ramp, look 45 degrees to the left (ie, 10 o'clock). The red glow is the magical ruby entrance, for the 7 am mall walking crowd. Each entrance is enclosed in different colored glass.
Take the ruby escalator up one level. Go straight ahead off the escalator and turn left after passing the back corner of the Burberry store and the mall directory sign. To get to the Tesla store, basically walk along following/hugging the right wall until you come to a store with a red car in it. You can't miss it.
Bathrooms are immediately after Tesla, down the hall on the right.
When I stopped by this afternoon, I spoke briefly with Brian (?). He said absolutely, positively, they are taking deposits when the store opens at 10am ET. They have been talking with mall security about expecting a crowd (he says the get "a hundred" calls a day about the 31st), but he wasn't sure exactly how early arrivals (between 7 and 10) would be handled.
EDIT - I should add, there is an Apple store in the mall (2 doors down from the Microsoft store), so this can't be the first time giddy tech geeks show up early to line up.