It had been on my Colorado bucket list since it opened in September 2021, but somehow I kept forgetting about it. When my sister came to visit, we finally made it happen—a Sunday morning trip to Meow Wolf’s Convergence Station in Denver.
I’ll be honest: I had no idea what to expect. People seem to either love Meow Wolf or they don’t, and I couldn’t quite picture what all the fuss was about.
Table of Contents
Getting There
The online ticketing process was straightforward and easy. We booked standard admission tickets and headed over, near Empower Field at Mile High. The building sits at an interesting triangular lot where I-25 and Colfax viaducts meet—hard to miss once you know where you’re going. Parking was $15 for all day.
The Journey Through Strange Worlds
We entered what looked like a transit terminal and took the C-Line elevator into “another world.” From there, we stepped into a maze of rooms and portals, each door opening to something completely unexpected. It was sort of fun to open a door never quite knowing what waited on the other side.
One of our first doors revealed a massive three-floor display—part underground cavern, part spaceship, part botanical garden with flowery hangings cascading down. Despite its size and strangeness, the space felt oddly peaceful.
As we moved through the installation, each room offered something different:
- Rooms with strobing lights that pulsed with energy
- Collections of vintage items arranged in mysterious ways
- Converted radios transformed into miniature dioramas—a surprisingly delightful detail
- Washing machines with vintage human things
- A serene blue-tiled room with benches that felt like stepping into a spa
- A two-floor castle structure where you could ‘play’ an organ
- A small mirror maze that I particularly enjoyed, especially having done one in San Francisco just weeks earlier
- An entryway where two sets of stairs collide, making a fun walk though
- Science-like room with a circle mural and QR codes to scan to keep learning about random subjects if you want to dive deeper
The Bigger Picture
What I didn’t fully appreciate until after our visit was the sheer scale of what we’d experienced. Convergence Station is actually MeowWolf’s largest installation at 90,000 square feet—bigger than the Guggenheim Museum and spanning four floors. That’s more than double the size of their Las Vegas Omega Mart location.
The installation represents the work of over 300 artists, including more than 110 local Colorado artists. The project reportedly had a budget around $60 million and took several years to build in a custom-designed structure.
There’s actually a whole storyline behind everything we saw: four alien worlds (C Street, Eemia, Numina, and the Ossuary) that collided in a cosmic event called “the Convergence,” creating a place where memories are currency. The installation is meant to be the first transit station connecting these worlds to Earth, operated by the fictional Quantum Department of Transportation (QDOT).
The QPASS Experience
We noticed some people had cards, transforming their vist into a more interactive quest throughout the installation. We didn’t do this, but apparently you can purchase a $3 RFID card called a QPASS that lets you collect “MEMs” (memories) from four missing women and uncover a deeper mystery about stopping something called “The Last Stop” that would erase all memories. For those who like interactive storytelling, this seems like a whole other layer to the experience.
My Honest Take
We spent three hours there. I think we went into all the rooms. And we both left thinking the same thing: What was that?
I can’t explain what Meow Wolf is. I didn’t feel satisfied when I left. Is it art? I suppose it’s an art installation—an immersive, reality-bending, psychedelic art experience, as they describe it. But it’s not my kind of place.
I’m really glad it didn’t work out when my mom was in town a few years ago. She would have absolutely hated it.
About Meow Wolf
For those wondering what Meow Wolf actually is: it’s an arts and entertainment collective founded in 2008 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The name itself came from a meeting where founding artists put words into a hat—”Meow” and “Wolf” were pulled out, creating what was, at the time, a nonsensical moniker. Their stated purpose: “to expand worlds and minds through the lens of kaleidoscopic art.”
The collective started as a small group of Santa Fe artists seeking to break from the traditional art scene. Today, they have five permanent locations across the United States:
- Santa Fe, NM – House of Eternal Return (the original)
- Las Vegas, NV – Omega Mart
- Denver, CO – Convergence Station (opened September 2021)
- Grapevine, TX – The Real Unreal
- Houston, TX – Radio Tave
Each location offers a different immersive experience with its own narrative and theme, but they all share that distinctive MeowWolf style—maximalist, interactive, and deliberately disorienting.
Final Thoughts
Would I recommend it? That depends entirely on who you are. If you love experimental art, escape rooms, interactive experiences, or just want to say you’ve experienced something truly bizarre, then yes. If you prefer traditional art galleries where you can clearly understand what you’re looking at, maybe skip it.
For me, it was worth checking off my Colorado list, but I probably won’t be returning unless it something family visitors want to do. Some experiences are meant to be had once—just to understand what all the fuss is about. Meow Wolf Denver was exactly that for me.
Have you been to a MeowWolf location? Did you love it or leave scratching your head like I did? I’d be curious to hear from people who “got it” in a way I didn’t.