Meow Wolf Grapevine Review [Personal Experience With Photos]

I visited Meow Wolf Grapevine’s The Real Unreal with my family in February 2024. This immersive art experience was captivating and expanded our imaginations. If you’re planning a visit to Meow Wolf Grapevine, read this review to find out everything you need to know before stepping into a portal to The Real Unreal.

Visiting Meow Wolf Grapevine

Here’s the essential information you’ll need to visit Meow Wolf Grapevine.

Hours

Meow Wolf Grapevine hours are:

• Monday through Thursday — 12 p.m. to 9 p.m.
• Friday and Saturday — 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
• Sundays — 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

It’s best to check the website before you visit because special events such as Adulti-Verse can affect general admission hours.

Tickets

How much you’ll pay for tickets to Meow Wolf Grapevine depends on the date and time you plan to visit. 

If you book a general admission standard ticket, you’ll choose a scheduled date and entry time. General admission tickets start at $40 for adults and $20 for children 4 to 12. Kids 3 and under can enter for free. You can sometimes find Meow Wolf promo codes online that can give you a discount on admission. 

You can buy a Totally Worth It bundle starting at $55, allowing you to choose a date but arrive at any time. You’ll also get a collector ticket with a lanyard and souvenir pin.

As you select a visit date, you’ll see the exhibit hours for that day. Some dates indicate special events that can affect hours, such as Adulti-Verse tickets for selected evenings only open to guests 21 and older.

When you purchase your tickets, you can add on chromadepth glasses for $2 per pair if you’d like.

We got the glasses and felt they enhanced our visit, though we took breaks from wearing them occasionally.

Meow Wolf Grapevine also offers homeschool weeks, private events, and group sales for groups of 20 or more.

Hot Tip:

When you buy Meow Wolf tickets, you can earn elevated credit card rewards when you use one of the best credit cards for entertainment. For example, the Capital One Savor Cash Rewards Credit Card*×Information collected independently. Not reviewed by Capital One. earns 3% cash-back on entertainment and dining.

You can sign up for the Meow Wolf Grapevine newsletter to be alerted to upcoming events, such as artist talks, Adulti-Verse nights, and open studio time when you can make art in the Matt King Mystery Center community space.

Portal Pass

An alternative to regular tickets, Meow Wolf offers an annual Portal Pass with unlimited access (with some blackout dates) to a particular Meow Wolf exhibition for a year, plus 10% off additional general admission tickets at all locations, gift shop purchases, and food and beverages. 

At Meow Wolf Grapevine, Portal Pass prices start at $84 for adults and $54 for kids. If you’d like to sign up for a Portal Pass after visiting Meow Wolf Grapevine, you can upgrade your ticket within 7 days for a discounted pass. 

I can see how an annual pass would be fun, as we felt like we couldn’t explore everything we wanted to interact with within a single visit. However, I would love to see a Portal Pass that covers more than 1 location at a time. It would be excellent for travelers who want to visit multiple Meow Wolf locations in a single year. If my family could spend a couple of days at each Meow Wolf, we would.

Prohibited Items

Many items are prohibited at Meow Wolf Grapevine for safety and cleanliness. You’ll go through a metal detector and search as you enter the exhibition. Some of the items prohibited at Meow Wolf Grapevine include outside food or beverages (though you can bring an empty water bottle), weapons, federally illegal drugs, cigarettes or vapes, large backpacks or purses, tablets, or anything else deemed a challenge to public safety.

Meow Wolf suggests leaving prohibited items in your vehicle before entry, as the facility can’t store these items. However, there are storage lockers and stroller parking so that you can store some items — but don’t count on Meow Wolf Grapevine to offer you a locker to store prohibited items.

There’s also a code of conduct guests must follow. For example, you can’t visit while intoxicated or consume food or beverages outside designated areas. You’re also expected to be on good behavior — not abusive to the staff, guests, or art.

Food and Drink

You can’t bring outside food or beverages, but a small cafe and dining area are in the lobby.

There’s also a water fountain where you can fill empty water bottles, but you’ll need to finish drinking your water or dump it before you return to the exhibition.

The cafe features many local items, including locally bottled drinks and snacks.

There are some tables and chairs in the cafe where you can eat and drink before returning to the exhibition.

Restrooms

Restrooms are also in the lobby near the cafe. You can go in and out of the exhibition for restroom breaks as needed. You’ll just need to show your hand stamp to walk back in.

Gift Shop

The lobby also has an extensive gift shop with Meow Wolf merchandise ranging from apparel to pins and Experience Tubes. Merchandise is mostly related to The Real Unreal at Meow Wolf Grapevine. Still, you can find items from other Meow Wolf locations: House of Eternal Return, Convergence Station, and Omega Mart.

Accessibility

The Real Unreal is ADA-compliant and accessible. However, there are many steps up and down, various flooring textures, flashing visuals, and other elements that could be challenging for accessibility. That said, there are typically multiple ways to access spaces within Meow Wolf Grapevine, so you should be able to access a different way if a particular pathway isn’t working for you. Rooms with visual interactions that could pose a problem, such as strobe lights, have warning signs before you enter them.

Meow Wolf Grapevine has elevators and can be navigated in a wheelchair, on crutches, or with walkers or scooters. There are multiple places to sit within the exhibition and in the lobby. You can bring a service animal, but not emotional support animals, and you can’t leave animals in your vehicle while you visit. If you have specific questions or need to request accommodations such as dietary restrictions, you can contact Meow Wolf Grapevine.

Diversity and Inclusion

All guests are welcome at Meow Wolf Grapevine. You’ll see subtle hints of diversity and inclusion throughout the facility, with numerous rainbows, Kenyan prints, books, “gender fluid” drinks in the cafe cooler, and banned books on practically every bookshelf.

How Long To Visit

Meow Wolf Grapevine recommends arriving at least an hour and a half before the exhibition closes, but you may want more time to explore than that. You could spend a few hours or more. We recommend planning 3 to 4 hours, though you may want more time if you take a break in the cafe.

Family Friendly

Before visiting The Real Unreal, I asked a friend who had been there whether he thought we should bring our kids, and he gave us a resounding yes. Having experienced it myself, I strongly agree that Meow Wolf Grapevine is excellent for kids, and you shouldn’t hesitate to bring children — as long as they can be respectful of the art and other guests. While this experience would be fun without our kids, and we plan to visit without them another time, our 3 school-age kids got so much out of the Meow Wolf experience. 

I asked my kids for reviews, and this attraction is 100% Merritt kid-approved. They said it was “awesome,” “5 stars,” “like playing a video game in real life,” and “Can we go back tomorrow?”

I loved Meow Wolf Grapevine for my kids because it teaches empathy, problem-solving, exploration, adventure, attention to detail, investigation, and, of course, art appreciation. There’s a huge sense of play throughout as you interact with everything you can get your hands on, slide through a washer, and even play Minecraft on a character’s computer. 

Kids can get stickers with a parent’s phone number in case they get separated. As we were issued phone number stickers, the front desk attendant cheekily explained that sometimes you go through the washer and don’t know how to get back. We unexpectedly put the lost kid’s protocol into action during our visit when my daughter and I got separated during a bathroom break. She found an employee in the shop, and we were quickly reunited and back to the experience!

Before our visit, I was concerned Meow Wolf might be scary for kids. In reality, it’s not scary, and you shouldn’t expect it to be like a haunted house with jump scares around every corner. But there is always something unexpected; it is strange and can make you feel unsettled. That said, my kids were entirely thrilled by the experience.

Even if kids aren’t invested in the storyline, the entire space is fun to explore and play in. When we said it was time to go, my kids negotiated for more rides through the washer and a walk out through the Glowquarium — holding their breath the whole time.

Traveling to Meow Wolf Grapevine 

Meow Wolf Grapevine is in a great spot for travelers, with a major international airport and hotels just minutes away and plenty of restaurants and other attractions nearby. Meow Wolf’s The Real Unreal exhibition is within Grapevine Mills, a massive shopping complex in Grapevine, Texas. Grapevine is in the Dallas-Fort Worth area, about 30 minutes from Dallas proper. 

Flying into Meow Wolf Grapevine couldn’t be more convenient, as Dallas Fort Worth International Airport (DFW) is a little over 5 minutes away from Grapevine Mills by car. 

Many hotels in the Grapevine area are perfect for visiting Meow Wolf Grapevine. Great Wolf Lodge Grapevine — a family-friendly water park resort my family enjoys — is about 5 minutes away, and the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center is similarly close by, just across the street from Great Wolf Lodge. If you’re looking for points hotels, Hilton DFW Lakes Executive Conference Center, Hyatt Place Dallas/Grapevine, and SpringHill Suites by Marriott Dallas DFW Airport North/Grapevine are all within walking distance of Grapevine Mills — and some have a free shuttle to DFW airport.

While you’re in the area, many other attractions are worth visiting. Within Grapevine Mills, there’s LEGOLAND Discovery Center, SEA LIFE Grapevine Aquarium, Peppa Pig World of Play, The Escape Game Dallas, Round 1 Bowling and Amusement, and Lunar Mini Golf of Grapevine. Venture a little further to nearby Frisco, and you can visit some of my family’s favorites: the National Videogame Museum and Nerdvana gaming restaurant.

Several restaurants are near Meow Wolf Grapevine, including Blue Goose Cantina Mexican Restaurant with Tex-Mex, Rainforest Cafe that’s great for families, K-Dogs Korean corn dogs, and Kimu Sushi, all within Grapevine Mills.  

The Meow Wolf Grapevine Experience

Hot Tip:

If you don’t want my visit to influence your personal experience at Meow Wolf Grapevine, stop reading and enjoy your visit! For a thorough preview of the full walk-through, which may include spoilers and tips, keep reading!

Immersive and maximalist, Meow Wolf Grapevine is a 30,000-square-foot portal to Illinois but so much more. A collaborative art project with a narrative, all Meow Wolf locations are within the same multiverse.

The Real Unreal offers interactive art you can experience and feel like you’re contributing to as you try to solve the mystery. My family said it felt like a virtual reality video game in reality.

This experience planted a worm in all of our brains. It’s been nearly a week since we visited, and we’re still talking about it, asking questions, and wondering about what we saw. 

Entering Meow Wolf Grapevine

Meow Wolf Grapevine has 2 entry options: a mall parking lot entrance or entry from the mall. We parked near the parking lot entrance but arrived early for our entry time, so we walked around the mall for a few minutes before going to the mall entrance.

The entrance from inside the mall could easily be mistaken for just another mall store — there are mannequins in the front windows, and you can see the gift shop from the mall walkway. But once you get inside and start exploring, you’ll understand there’s much more space than the storefront suggests.

This location was once a Bed, Bath and Beyond — now it’s way beyond!

Our ticketed entry time was 4:40 p.m., and we arrived a few minutes early. We walked through a metal detector, emptied our pockets, and checked in at the front desk with our tickets. There, we were given the chromadepth glasses we purchased, and the kids got stickers with one of our cell phone numbers on them in case we got separated. 

Each of us got a hand stamp explaining that we could go in and out of the exhibition as much as we wanted until closing time. We could leave to use the restroom, eat in the cafe, hit the gift shop, or just sit and take a break in the lobby.

After that, we were directed to the exhibition entry area, where we were greeted by a staff member who explained more about the experience and what we could and could not do.

Then, they told us we could enter the portal to Illinois.

Inside Meow Wolf Grapevine

As soon as we opened the door to the exhibition, we were transported to an evening in an Illinois front yard. I was immediately impressed by the quality of the experience, as there was something for every sense but taste. We could see the ’70s-style house with all the lights on, doors to the shed and garage, the tree with a bench, a starry sky, dappled light from a tree canopy, and the front yard garden. 

But there were much more subtle cues for other senses, as we could also feel the slightly cooler and just barely breezy air, hear the cicadas, and I swear I caught a whiff of grass even though we were on artificial turf and the plants were fake, too. Maybe my brain was just filling in the blanks, but this experience felt as real as we could get to an Illinois yard inside a Texas mall.

The multi-sensory experience continued throughout the exhibition, with each room offering a new encounter. While some parts of the exhibition seemed normal at first glance, like the front yard and family home, a closer look always revealed that the experience turned to the unreal.

The Storyline

The story started to unfold once we entered the home inside the exhibition. We were in the home of the Delaney and Fuqua families, and the family was in crisis: 10-year-old Jared was missing. It became apparent that he’d been gone a while. 

We encountered all sorts of media pointing to Jared’s disappearance: flyers, letters, and videos. A Meow Wolf staff member was walking around with a flyer asking if we’d seen Jared and urging us to find him. The storyline added somewhat of an escape room element, as we had a mission to find Jared and look for clues to his disappearance and whereabouts throughout the exhibition.

As we continued throughout the experience, I realized it wasn’t just Jared missing. The entire family was gone.

The somewhat-normal areas of the house were among my favorite parts of the exhibition. While much of the exhibition was physically sensory, I could feel the love of the family in the home. It felt nice to be in their space, even in a troubling time. This was certainly a trigger for empathy that pushed us to help and find Jared to get this charming, loving family out of crisis.

It sort of felt like going to an estate sale where you’re seeing the story of a family’s life as you look through the objects left behind. Except at The Real Unreal, you’re not shopping but rather attempting to solve a mystery — and you’re encouraged to open every door (except the employee and emergency exit doors), go through the mail, and fiddle with practically everything you can get your hands on.

The experience went far beyond the family home, though. Some of the rooms at Meow Wolf Grapevine were homelike or seemed like a home-adjacent fantasy. However, others practically transported us to another world, though still within the same experience and story.

Ultimately, we think we found Jared. We saw him come home, at least and got hints as to what happened to the rest of the family. But we certainly didn’t solve the entire mystery of everything that happened or where the family was while we walked through their home. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are multiple ways to “find” Jared. We could come back to explore and uncover more of the mystery, but I got a sense that we could peel back as many layers as we’d like, but we’d still leave with unanswered questions.

The Experience

Going through Meow Wolf Grapevine was very disorienting, and it seemed like we were never really done. I felt unsettled the entire time we were there, but that’s not a drawback — it was just part of the experience. We found the exhibition very fun to explore.

If there was a linear way to visit the exhibition, we didn’t follow it. We’d open a door but realize we weren’t done exploring another space. We saw so much, and I’m pretty sure that we experienced every room available, but there was always something else to find. Ping-ponging throughout the exhibition was exciting and anxiety-inducing, knowing there was more to come but also worrying we were missing out on spaces we hadn’t explored yet.

It was overwhelming to see how much there was to interact with. There were devices with photos and videos to watch and find clues, cabinets, doors to open, paper clues to find, seemingly endless phone numbers to call, buttons to press, and pianos to play — and that’s not all.

We could slide through a washer, crawl through a dryer, play pianos, text beans, read books, walk through refrigerators, dance with a goat, and so much more.

Even things we found often took us to another spot. For example, we’d find a clue that brought us back to a space we’d visited before, but with more information, we interacted with the elements differently.

The Meow Wolf Grapevine experience was more than just solving the mystery, though. We enjoyed visiting the spaces and seeing the art. Lamp Shop Alley was a hit with my kids. They called it San Fransokyo because it reminded them of the city in “Big Hero 6.”

Everyone enjoyed the arcade and the hints within it, and my husband probably spent a solid hour over the course of our visit interacting with the phone and ATM in this space. My husband also enjoyed the Neon Kingdom, noticing that each structure had a face.

I especially loved The Forest, which seemed like a backyard fantasy world with a treehouse, musical fungus, and friendly-looking creatures. I could have easily curled up with a book in the reading nook within the tree’s trunk for hours.

The more we explored, the easier it was to understand how the spaces connected. We found shortcuts we hadn’t seen the first time through and didn’t realize how close some spaces were to each other. Many rooms had windows that hinted at what was coming up next, even if we couldn’t get directly to that space from where we were.

Sometimes, Meow Wolf staff interacted with us during the exhibition, offering hints or showing us what to do. We got a hint about playing particular piano keys from someone in the neon piano room. Another staff member wordlessly demonstrated how to interact with the musical fungus in the forest. With signs informing us about recording in progress, I couldn’t help but wonder if there’s a control room somewhere where staff members watch guests interact with the exhibition and offer an occasional nudge.

The Meow Wolf Multiverse

The collaborative nature of The Real Unreal was particularly interesting, as many artists, storytellers, and designers collaborated on this project to create an experience that flows together. Every space is part of the same story, but it often feels like you’ve entered a new experience. 

All of the Meow Wolf installations are part of the same multiverse, which is evident as you see elements within The Real Unreal from other locations, like the desert trailer room with elements from House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, the space-themed store connects to Convergence Station in Denver, and even a phone number that connected to the Omega Mart return line in Las Vegas. A radio broadcast in the desert trailer room from “Eternal Radio” hinted at the new Meow Wolf Houston location.

Overall, Meow Wolf Grapevine and the greater Meow Wolf multiverse are huge collaborative art efforts. More than 2,200 people, ranging from lead artists to communications leads, script and experience designers, production managers, and visual developers, have come together to create Meow Wolf installations, many working across multiple locations and projects. 

Pros and Cons of Meow Wolf Grapevine

My family couldn’t get enough of The Real Unreal. We spent more than 4 hours exploring, and although we were tired and needed to leave, we would have enjoyed spending more time there. Traffic was fairly low for us on a weekday afternoon but picked up more into the evening.

Next time, I would plan to arrive earlier and stay late if we felt like it, with enough time to take a break in the cafe. I’d also wear more comfortable shoes, such as sneakers, as my feet hurt from wearing walking sandals on mostly concrete floors.

One of the things I liked about Meow Wolf Grapevine was that there are many ways to experience it. If you had just an hour to visit, you could speed through and enjoy the sights, sounds, and smells. 

We saw some people treating it similarly to a museum exhibition, pointing out interesting artistic elements and quickly moving on. But we also saw other people deeply involved in the investigation, spending a lot of time interacting with the elements and working hard to solve the mystery of Jared’s disappearance as if they were in an escape room. 

Each major space within The Real Unreal is an entire experience where you could spend a lot of time or take a day to interact with particular element types. For example, you could spend all day reading handwritten notes, receipts, journals, and especially letters and postcards. The books on the shelves are real, and I wished I’d had time to take a longer look at the recipe cards in the kitchen because they all sounded great. 

You could also spend an extended period looking at digital media, calling phone numbers, or playing particular piano keys.

While we had an excellent experience, some of the interactive elements weren’t in perfect working order, probably from wear and tear.

Other Meow Wolf Locations

Meow Wolf has 4 locations open now and a fifth location under construction:

• Convergence Station in Denver, Colorado
• House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, New Mexico
• Meow Wolf Los Angeles (expected in 2025)
• Omega Mart in Las Vegas, Nevada
• Radio Tave in Houston, Texas
• The Real Unreal in Grapevine, Texas

Meow Wolf Houston is now open in Houston’s Fifth Ward, just across the street from Saint Arnold Brewing. 

Before I visited Meow Wolf Grapevine, I attended the artist announcement for Meow Wolf Houston, featuring artists including international art activist Kill Joy and Houston’s Fifth Ward artist El Franco Lee II. Notable Houston graffiti artist GONZO247 is Meow Wolf Houston’s artist liaison. 

Meow Wolf Houston is in an excellent location and includes a radio station and another Glowquarium like the one at Meow Wolf Grapevine.

Service

All of our interactions with staff at Meow Wolf Grapevine were positive. Whether checking in, finding a lost child, or exploring elements within the exhibition, we felt well-guided and informed about what to expect. Staff members often added to the experience with unusual style or voice effects and were always friendly and kind.

Final Thoughts

Meow Wolf Grapevine was a great experience, and we’re all ready to explore more. Our travel plans will bring us back to Grapevine a couple more times this year, and we plan to make return visits to The Real Unreal. We will also go out of our way to try and visit the other Meow Wolf locations in Santa Fe, Las Vegas, and Denver — and I expect to be among the first in line at Meow Wolf Houston.