Meow Wolf Denver

OH MY GOODNESS. How do I describe Meow Wolf Denver? It’s unlike anything you have ever seen. An immersive, subversive, overwhelming multiverse of interactive art made to explore, touch, crawl through and Experience with a capital E.

Meow Wolf’s third (and a half–see bottom) permanent art installation is Denver’s Convergence Station. I was lucky enough to visit soon after it opened last September. Meow Wolf’s “style,” for lack of a better term, is the result of an artists’ collective that reaches somewhere beyond the concept of eclectic. In Denver, 300 artists created the interior of Convergence Station, including over 110 artists from Colorado.

Convergence Station: the concept

At Meow Wolf Denver’s Convergence Station, the QDOT – that’s the Quantum Department of Transportation (AKA, the elevator) transports you multidimensionally to four different worlds. These worlds occupy and collide inside the top 3-4 floors (though “floors” cease to mean much on the inside. I swear it’s like the TARDIS.) These four convergent worlds are the alien Numina, apocalyptic C-Street, the underground Ossuary, and the ice caves of Eemia.

On my visit, I more or less started at the top and worked my way down. However, there is absolutely no linear way to experience the entire building. “Portals” abound everywhere, popping you in and out of various worlds at a step. Enter a bus in one world and exit it in another. Wind your way through a small mirror maze. Or attempt to walk through a twisting tunnel. Convergence Station is a place where you are encouraged to open closed doors, crawl through holes, press buttons and explore, explore, explore. It’s curiosity and creativity to the nth power.

Outside & the Ground Floor

Convergence Station is literally wedged into a triangular gap in the interchange between downtown Denver’s Colfax Avenue and Interstate 25. You get to it underneath the highway via the Auraria Campus. The parking lot isn’t very big, costs $10, and is completely unavailable on NFL game days due to its proximity to the football stadium. The NFL schedule and alternate parking options are listed on this page. You might want to consider public transit for your visit.

Inside, the lobby looks like a futuristic airport or bus terminal since it’s the departure lounge for your multi-dimensional journey. To the left is a cafe and to the right is a gift shop. In the lobby is a helpfully-staffed information desk where you can obtain a QPASS. (More on that below.)

Also on the main level is the Perplexiplex, an event space with a stage. During regular operating hours, four scenes of shifting and interactive projections make you feel you are in an alien forest, with rings of water marking each step across the floor.

Numina

Numina takes up most of the top two floors. The best way I can describe it is like an alien planet. Like ET’s homeworld. Alien plant life covers the walls while a giant spaceship(?) dominates the middle of the cavern. Strange beasts abound, like the fish lady with a waterfall of illuminated hair and a Dr. Seuss-like long-legged character who stands nearby. Huge jellyfish creatures drip with chimes. And pay attention to details – you can find constellations of flora under glass bubbles on the walls like so many miniature art installations.

C-Street

Conversely, the grittiness of C-Street has no biological element to it at all. It looks like a street scene from an apocalyptic movie set. Climb into a hovercar or a futuristic dump truck and flip all the switches. Along the street, doors open into secret labs, a movie theater, a pizza house playplace, or even a room covered in street signs and musical instruments. At one point, I opened tiny doors in a boiler room to find miniature scenes featuring insects being ridden like horses.

(The “music room” is my favorite. With a houseboat in one corner and a deconstructed piano and drum set on the walls, the focus is on the ceiling and a circle of chimes that surround a digital starry sky. All the instruments are actually played (automatically), and it’s a relatively peaceful space compared to the rest of the building.)

Ossuary

I find the Ossuary a little harder to define. I’m not sure where it starts and ends, which is probably the point. The central part is a white tomb/temple-like open space with pillars featuring mini floating art installations in each. An alien silver icon ready to be worshipped stands on an altar in the middle. The stark, spaceship-white walls abruptly end in rough-hewn, black cave walls.

A library full of real books is nearby, featuring a sofa that is a popular photo spot. (Which I totally stumbled into. It’s one thing to notice your surroundings and tune out all the people, but try to notice when there’s a line…note to self.)

Eemia

I feel like the Ossuary connects more or less directly into the ice caves of Eemia, where you find a massive “kaleidogothic” cathedral of multi-colored plexiglass. Walk inside it and pull levers to play the organ or turn the table wheel to rotate the central spire!

Nearby stand two robotic mecha-suits(?) that look like they’ve just excavated the cathedral from the ice. One with a throne-like seat and control panels is another popular photo spot.

A Deeper Dive: QPASS

I will say that just a walk-through of Meow Wolf Denver’s Convergence Station is enough to overfill your senses. But if you want more or visit multiple times, you might want to look into getting a QPASS. In the backstory of the four worlds, memories are considered currency, and you can collect memories with a QPASS card.

QPASS is an RFID-enabled plastic card the size of a credit card. Convergence Station recommends sharing one QPASS per family or small group. Each QPASS costs $3.

Then, while you explore the worlds of Convergence Station, boop your QPASS at MEMports found throughout to collect fragments of memories. As you collect memories, you piece together a story of the residents of this world, and can even return memories to their rightful owners. You can also check your memory inventory using memory ATM stations or your phone.

I’d say touring Meow Wolf Denver takes three to four hours if you want to see everything. The QPASS experience alone takes two hours. I don’t know that touring Convergence Station AND doing QPASS would take a solid six hours, but it will significantly add to your time, which is why most folks don’t do the QPASS experience on their first visit. But hey, there’s a food court if you want to stay all day.

Admission & Hours

The cost to visit other dimensions in Meow Wolf Denver’s Convergence Station costs $45-49 for adults, $40-44 for military, seniors 65 and up, and children 5-13. Ages 4 and under are free. Prices are the lower number most days, but “peak pricing” (the higher number) is in effect on certain days and for evening events, like “adultiverse” adults-only nights. Purchase all tickets online here.

For Colorado residents, adult tickets are $35 and discounted tickets for military, seniors, and children are $30. That seems to apply even during peak pricing.

Hours are 10 am-10 pm Sunday-Thursday and 10 am-12 am on Friday-Saturday.

Other Meow Wolf Locations

Meow Wolf started in Santa Fe in 2016 with the House of Eternal Return. What looks like a typical single-family house soon reveals a bizarre hidden dimension if you, say, step through the refrigerator or slide into the washing machine. I wanted to visit when I was in Santa Fe, but they were closed for Covid.

A Las Vegas installation called Omega Mart hides a colorful and trippy second world behind bland supermarket shelves and weird and wacky produce.

The “and a half” installation refers to Meow Wolf’s Kaleidoscape ride at Elitch Gardens, barely a mile away in Downtown Denver. The ride is a laser shooter ride, though you don’t rack up points. Instead, you make specific effects happen during your ride.

Conclusion

Meow Wolf Denver’s Convergence Station ignites everything I love about exploring new places. I was ALL OVER everything, climbing through every hole and tunnel, opening every door and drawer I could get my hands on. It was like crack cocaine for my travel-brain, while also seeing in LSD.

I was SO sad when I finally saw everything because there was nothing new to find! When I popped back out the front door, I 100% felt like I could come back the very next day and do it all again. At the same time, it is kind of exhausting, just constant sensory overload. By the end (or, for me, by the Ossuary), things sort of start to run together.

And yet, I would absolutely love to go back to Convergence Station and do the QPASS experience and visit all the other Meow Wolf installations too. It’s just so unlike anything else in the entire world in both concept and scale. If it weren’t obvious, I can’t recommend it highly enough!