It's been about 10 years since anyone's posted anything here, so I thought I'd update anyone…read morereading this.
The building's still ugly on the outside, but the actual shopping centre has had a massive overhaul post-2016. A new logo and orange branding works really well I think, and the orange neon strips around the sides of the building add some actual style to it, however it's still a total architectural freak. There's now McDonald's and Costa drive-through locations in the car park, and a huge 24 hour gym upstairs. Sainsbury's is as big and strong as ever, although they've closed the cafe recently, apparently Starbucks or some gourmet burger section coming? Aldi is here, very quickly replacing BHS after they went belly-up, and a Poundland, which I actually rate, especially for soft drinks and batteries. Public transport has improved massively, making it kind of a transport hub for the south of the city, with city centre links pretty much every 2 minutes, and east and westbound services a plenty. Borders links are regular as well.
There are a lot more local offerings inside, with an excellent local bike shop, and small stands in the main hall with rotating regularly. It's still not upmarket by any means, but with banks, 3 supermarkets, boots, new look, WHSmith (how are they still going as a company?) waterstones, cex, mcdonalds, costa, greggs, subway, the entertainer toy shop, tresspass, penty of carrier stores and a couple of shoe shops, the variety and actual quality of the stores has gone way up.
It's also just super handy as they've added stuff like a water bottle refill station with some of the best water you can get in public (i know it's weird but trust me) and some pretty nice toilets (which are open 24 hours), a passport photo booth, postbox and good bicycle parking, they've seriously cleaned up their act in the last 10 years.
Also yeah, the whole thing is open 24 hours a day because of the gym, so you can just wander in at 2am and sit in the tables in the hall and eat a sandwich or something.
There's some serious plans to add hotels and a cinema to the site, in addition to potential tram links and better walking/cycling access.
The future is looking up for cameron toll, and this review is a really strange contrast to the ones from a few years back. This isn't really something you see with shopping malls, but apparently it's doing really well these days, and definitely worth a visit if you're in the south of Edinburgh.
Whether for essentials for the house, grabbing lunch, getting your eyes checked at specsavers, buying a new phone or computer, or just nipping in to go to the toilet and steal the ice-cold water from the dispenser, it's a solid spot and improved by an order of magnitude since the start of the decade.