An Adventure at Meow Wolf in Grapevine Texas

All the Summer fun is quickly ending around our house. The kids are back to school next week. That means the Uber Wife goes back to school next week as well (she's an Educational Assistant for special needs kids). Because of this and since my birthday fell nicely near the weekend, we decided to take the 3 hour there and 3 hour back road trip over to a little suburb of Dallas, Texas, known as Grapevine. What's in Grapevine? Meow Wolf! What's Meow Wolf? Let me break it down.

Meow Wolf at a high level is an interactive art exhibit that's basically an expensive Fun House for adults. From the history that I've been told (my oldest is super into this), the first Meow Wolf was in Sante Fe New Mexico, and was really just an experiment to see if this idea could be profitable. The answer was yes, which led to probably the most famous of the Meow Wolf locations, Omega Mart in Las Vegas, Nevada.

The next Meow Wolf location to open up was Convergence Station in Denver, Colorado. This is one my wife and youngest had a chance to visit earlier in the summer when they took a trip to visit her side of the family. A little less than a month ago, the fourth Meow Wolf location opened up in Grapevine, Texas. The experience is titled "The Real Unreal."  

Welcome to the Real Unreal!

The Real Unreal exhibit begins in a house, which very much seems at first like any other house when you enter, but around the rooms you begin to find story clues as to where we find the family that lives there.  So here's the story as much as I could figure out:

Figuring out clues to Jared's disappearance

The boy of the family, Jared, had been missing for three days and the family went in a panic to find him. Jared, as it turns out, had a little not-so-imaginary friend named Happy Gary, a very colorful and crazy axolotl-type-of-whimsical-creature. Jared followed Happy Gary into the Real Unreal for only a short time, but time in the Real Unreal works differently. Upon Jared's return, the whole family got sucked into the Real Unreal because Happy Gary broke something, and now the entire house was serving as a portal into the Real Unreal realm. (um, something like that)

I may be totally wrong on a few things and there seems to be lots of mysterious questions. We ran into a really nice 17-year-old there who took a liking to our nerdy family and kept running into us and talking with us about all the clues and things he had found. He was REALLY into the story. 

I took my 360 camera with me, and unfortunately they didn't allow selfie sticks, so most of my 360 shots also feature my stretched arm and hand holding up the camera, which to be honest, kind of helps sell the vibe of Meow Wolf anyway.

So depending on which portal you take out of the house, you'll end up in different areas of the maze-like exhibit. Eventually the paths kind of converge into a crazy City Street full of neon and wild art. There's a phone booth there with numbers you can call and get random messages about what's happening in the city, like the number we called to find out that every second Tuesday of the month there may or may not be some kind of worm club gathering?

360 photo of a crowded city street ally -- open it up and look around!

Inside the City there's a very chill dance club that plays some really mellow electronic music as the whole black lit and neon filled room undulates to the beat. It was pretty great. We spent a lot of time in this spot, just hanging out and enjoying our time people watching. For an extra 5 bucks a person they'll give you some 3D glasses you can wear, and really the best time to wear these was in this dance club. The colors just gave the walls a new "Real unreal" depth to it.

The undulating dance club of the Real Unreal

There was also a really scuffed up looking arcade here with actual, playable homegrown video games for the exhibit. It was really hard to get some screen time in front of one of the games since there were so many people there, so I let my kids do all the playing while the wife and I sat down on a sofa made from a stitched together pile of clothes.

360 photo of the arcade

Of course, this place also lends itself to Instagram photo opportunities throughout. It definitely has a different vibe than a dedicated photo op installation, but with great spots like the black and white illusion tunnel, it just makes sense: this is a great spot for getting unusual photos and videos.

360 photo of the illusion hallway

It was a long and fun day, and the family had a good time exploring. It might be fun to actually try to come back at a less crowded time than the end of summer on a weekend of the opening month. In fact, a second tuesday of the month, a few months down the road, during the middle of the school year sounds perfect! I'd love to see if there actually was some kind of special worm thing happening at that time. I'm sure Happy Gary would be excited to see us again.

Happy Dueling!