Meow Wolf Denver: 10 Tips for Visiting

Meow Wolf Denver: Convergence Station is the third chapter in Meow Wolf’s pantheon of world-class art installations. It is located just outside downtown Denver, beside Empower Field at Mile High (home of the Denver Broncos).

The Meow Wolf art collective has been around since 2008, beginning in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and expanding to Las Vegas, Denver, and Dallas. Meow Wolf Denver opened in 2021.

Despite being around fifteen years and having overwhelmingly positive reviews, Meow Wolf remains a bit off-radar. So, if you’re thinking about visiting the Convergence Station installment in Denver, here are 10 tips we think could help you decide whether Meow Wolf is for you, or to prepare for what could be your strangest (and best) experience of the year.

1. Meow Wolf Denver is Expensive. And Worth It.

Admission pricing is fluid. Some days of the week are more affordable, but the variable is certain weeks have higher traffic so they raise the prices. Link

Tickets start at $40 and run up to $55. Colorado residents save $10. Parking is $10.

Is Meow Wolf Denver worth the forty or fifty bucks? Absolutely. We encourage you to read more to find out why.

2. Plan on Spending 3-5 Hours

Meow Wolf: Convergence Station is 90,000 square feet of immersive art; a collaborate effort of more than 300 artists with 70+ installations to explore.

If that sounds significant, just wait until you see it.

We imagine someone could spend an entire day auditing the funky features of Meow Wolf Denver. Perhaps more than a day. That said, we “hit the wall” at the four hour mark and left highly satisfied with the experience.

Meow Wolf: Convergence Station is an over-stimulating phenomenon. It’s like going to Trader Joe’s for the first time if Trader Joe’s were a super-weird maze.

3. There are Five Floors

One floor is for the employees. Another floor is the main floor where you enter. This is where you find the gift shop, cafe, restrooms, perplexiplex venue, etc.

The Convergence Station art installation is spread over the other three floors. And the top floor isn’t nearly as elaborate as the other two floors.

You will spend most of your time on two floors of the building. An elevator will take you to them.

4. There is No Map at Meow Wolf Denver

I am a very organized person, so this one was hard to accept. I asked a few questions at the Info Booth on the entrance level, one of which was, “Is there a map?” She told me, “No, there isn’t a map. But if you somehow find one you shouldn’t trust it.”

So, you’re going to have to explore this 90,000 sq. ft. art installation/maze with zero instructions.

5. You Are Going to Feel Disoriented

The same woman who told me there was no map gave me this simple advice:

“You are going to be confused. Embrace the confusion. It’s basically the thing.”

She was exactly right. Meow Wolf Denver: Convergence Station is highly disorienting. At first you will have no bearings whatsoever. There is a primary central setting that looks like an outdoor mall; from there an abundance of doors branch off into corridors, staircases, and rooms upon rooms.

You might end up in a movie theater. Or an ice castle. Or a three-story swamp. Who knows?

The room in which you arrive might have a door in the back corner, or maybe not. It could be full of doll parts, or mimic an 80’s style pizza restaurant. There might be televisions showing the strangest commercials or interviews you could ever imagine. You might find yourself watching that television for ten minutes, wondering, “Who the $#%! made this?”

Count on it, actually. You are going to have your mind blown that someone actually made all this.

6. A Story of Four Worlds Colliding

I don’t want to give up too much here. Meow Wolf Denver isn’t just an eclectic assembly of rooms, ante-rooms, and hallways. Something connects the drama, but its weird and not apparent.

In essence, the future allows people to travel intergalactically via a transporter called, “The Transmonic Rift Access Mechanism system (TRAM)”. Remember, this is all made up.

Denver is the first TRAM location available on earth. The TRAM makes travel to the Convergence possible, which is, “four alien worlds joined together in a rare cosmic event — a place where memories are currency.” This is your setting.

You will eventually discover the layout of Meow Wolf Denver is broken up into 4 “Lands”:

C Street: An urban sanitation district with alleyways, shops and a “creative political system”.

Eemia: A city that boasts an elaborate Kaleidogothic Cathedral and is struggling to reconnect with the rest of its planet.

Ossuary: An ancient underground world that stores memories, knowledge and secrets in its subterranean catacombs.

Numina: a six-dimensional sentient habitat that may have opted into the Convergence to observe the way other beings live.

7. The Secret Narrative at Meow Wolf Denver

Ahem… if you are observant enough you will figure out which “worlds” are which and will notice when you are in the heart of one or another. They blend together — and everything is just plain odd — so most of the time it is unclear where you are or what is “really” happening.

But if you look closely in a handful of places you will notice incredibly descriptive things. You can sit at a computer full of files and read through them — there are endless odd accounts of the Convergence.

Or you might find a book full of stories (memories) that you could spend two or more hours thumbing through, all of them full of information from events that have taken place in these strange worlds.

For an extra $3, visitors can purchase a QPASS, which gives you access to the “memories” of the citizens of each world and takes you deeper into the secret stories hidden in the installation. Visitors can view their collected memories at Memory ATMs or online after they leave Convergence Station and use them to piece together the installation’s secret narrative.

We didn’t opt for the QPASS — it wasn’t recommended — but if we ever return we would do it because we already have our bearings. It certainly wasn’t necessary to get our money’s-worth, and the extra information probably would have burned us out.

8. Characters to Help Guide You

Costumed staffers are placed all around the installation. Most of them are playing some sort of character, so just find the ones who look/act like they belong in Numnia, Ossuary, etc. Think cyber-punks and D&D crackpots.

You can ask character staff anything you want. They behave sort-of like NPC’s — they only have so much info they can parse. That said, in one instance a staffer spontaneously gathered a group of us in a space pod contraption and had us all push buttons around the room at the same time. The lights went out and the ceiling lit up and we enjoyed a bizarre light and sound show. That never would have happened on our own. I can only imagine how many Easter Eggs are hidden around the Convergence Station.

We didn’t utilize the staff very much because it didn’t seem necessary. In retrospect, our experience could have been even better if we had asked more questions.

9. Eventually You’ll Get Your Bearings

When you first get off the elevator you won’t know where you are going. Just open a door and see where it leads. If there’s another door in the room, open it and keep going.

You will feel lost and probably won’t be able to tell the floors apart, at least for a while. C-Street unites Convergent Station, so you can always rely on that as a home base of sorts.

Eventually, hopefully, things will begin to look familiar. For us, around the three hour mark we had the place mapped out. The last hour we spent checking for passages to places we might have missed.

10. The Level of Detail is Incredible

Three hundred artists collaborated on Convergence Station — If you told us it was 3,000 we would believe you. This is a massive achievement! Genius, even. I remain in awe a month later. No lie. How did they organize and execute an installation this large with this level of detail?

The visceral and tactile components are enough to explode anyone’s expectations. And then there’s the theme, omnipresent, woven throughout it all, barely recognized nor comprehended.

Imagine watching a movie so amazing you don’t need to care about the plot or characters. That is how immersive and visually stimulating is Meow Wolf Denver Convergence Station. You don’t even need to know what is actually going on here. Gimme a break.

Plan a whole day and stay as long as you can tolerate. Look in every window. Read the notes on the walls. Open the desk drawers. Look at the DVD’s on the shelves. The level of detail is insane.

An Honest Conclusion for Meow Wolf Denver

We’ve been traveling the country full-time for the past 2.25 years. We’ve been in most of the states. The amount of attractions of which we’ve partaken is not small.

Here’s Year One.

Here’s Year Two.

Meow Wolf: Convergence Station is without a doubt one of the coolest things we’ve done.

Of all the man-made excursions we’ve experienced, this is right up there with City Museum in St. Louis, Graceland in Memphis, and the Rock n Roll HOF in Cleveland. Of course it doesn’t compete with Zion National Park, Downtown Charleston, and the Florida Panhandle Beaches, but what does?

We give Meow Wolf our strongest recommend possible for man-made tourist attractions.

One last note: I read a handful of one-star reviews of varying complaints. Apparently Meow Wolf isn’t for everyone. One particular complaint stood out because several people mentioned it… If you are sensitive to what some folks called “demonic” or “satanic” images, then perhaps Meow Wolf Convergence Station could offend you.

We are a Christian family that takes our faith very seriously and we never once felt offended. Some of it was super weird, for sure, but we wouldn’t call it “demonic”. But not all people see things the same. Just thought that was worth mentioning.

Thank you for stopping by our website! We are the Hoffmann family, a full-time RV family that has split residence in Seattle, Washington and San Antonio, Texas. We have special needs children that we homeschool, and work travel assignments for the Veteran Affairs Hospital. If you would like to learn more about us, check out our Start Here and Biography pages. In the meantime, God bless and travel happy!