At Florida’s Santa Rosa Mall in Mary Esther, the early video‑game boom gave the shopping centre two competing arcades. An industry mailing list compiled in 1990 identified an Aladdin’s Castle location at 300 Mary Esther Blvd within the Santa Rosa Mall; the same list recorded another arcade (Nickelodeon) at the same address, suggesting that the mall featured multiple game rooms. By the late‑1980s and early‑1990s, locals were flocking to the dark, neon‑lit Aladdin’s Castle to play coin‑op games and socialize, while tourists escaping rainy beach days gravitated there for entertainment.
After more than two decades of operation, the arcade closed. In July 2011 a thread on the International Arcade Museum forum announced that the Aladdin’s Castle at Santa Rosa Mall would close that weekend; the post gave the address (300 Mary Esther Blvd) and bluntly stated, “This is the last weekend then it will be out of business”. The mall continued to decline after the arcade’s closure. A local blogger who visited the mall in 2019 lamented that the food court was “a pale shadow of its former self” and wrote, “I miss the bookstore, theater and arcade”—evidence that the once‑popular game room remained a touchstone of nostalgia even years after shutting down. Plans announced in 2025 call for redeveloping Santa Rosa Mall into a mixed‑use complex, meaning Aladdin’s Castle lives on only in memories and forum posts.
References – Santa Rosa Mall
- Videoparadise – industry mailing list showing an Aladdin’s Castle at 300 Mary Esther Cut‑Off in Santa Rosa Mall (1990)
- Museum of the Game forum thread announcing the 2011 closure of the Santa Rosa Mall Aladdin’s Castle
- Local blog post recalling the decline of Santa Rosa Mall and missing the arcade (2019)
