The Grapevine Meow Wolf Is a Mind-Bending Trip With a Truly Texan Spirit

Meow Wolf has evolved from its scrappy origins as a series of arts collective pop-ups to become an artistic juggernaut and a millennial answer to Disney.

The renowned entertainment company based in Santa Fe, New Mexico, launched a thousand imitations that have never quite lived up to their inspiration. Lucky for us, Meow Wolf finally came howling this way with a new art space in Grapevine.

Harnessing the best of the "experience economy," the organization has grown rapidly since opening its first "portal" in its hometown with House of Eternal Return, in 2016, followed by Omega Mart in Las Vegas and Convergence Station in Denver, both in 2021.

Like these outposts, the new The Real Unreal in Grapevine (which opened last weekend to a select preview audience) draws from the same mythology that provides a foundation for the entire organization. Each story in Meow Wolf's "Multiverse" adds to the ever-evolving fairy tale growing and expanding as new outlets pop up nationwide. (Houston is scheduled for 2024.)

If you've experienced Eternal Return, there is much about The Real Unreal that will strike you as familiar. Both have an entryway into an alternate reality via a family home (an oversized Victorian in a former bowling alley in Santa Fe, a two-story brick abode with a garden in a former Bed, Bath & Beyond in Grapevine). Both tell the story of a disappearing family, and both offer breadcrumb clues to the plot hidden in nooks and crannies.

This time, the heroes of the story are a Black North Texas family: bisexual gardener and spice purveyor Carmen Delaney; her ailing jazz musician father, Gordon; her BFF from childhood LaVerne Fuqua; and LaVerne's 10-year-old son Jared, whose mysterious disappearance into The Real Unreal sets the whole storyline in motion. Even before visitors cross the garden to enter the house, there are clues to decipher, including a series of letters in the mailbox you can open and read. Computers and iPads let visitors snoop inside the home to see Carmen's photo streams or read the family's texts. A video of one of Gordon's performances playing on a television offers a hint that things are going to get weird, as do the missing-child posters on display.

A roomful of refrigerator doors opens to various portals, leading to everything from a life-size RV to a surrealistic store by Texas artist Yana Payusova. Explorers can exit the house into another dimension via outlets hidden inside the fireplace, the garden shed and the home's washer/dryer units.

Where the original exhibition came across as a little slapdash at times — you were 40% certain to bonk your head on an extra-low ceiling or scratch yourself on a pokey metal banister — The Real Unreal has refined its concept to be a little more user-friendly. Elevators for those with difficulty navigating stairs are a welcome development, although the shiny metal doors tend to interrupt the magic. Many of the openings from the house are also far easier to navigate than Eternal Return, even if crawling into the tunnel in the dryer (repeated in Santa Fe) is advisable only if you're relatively small or particularly flexible.

Once you enter the zone into which Jared vanished, Meow becomes its a-maze-ing best. Rooms disappear into other rooms, corridors spill out into a futuristic neon marketplace and stairs lead down to a colorful stage area that will eventually be used for performances, including (according to a guide) poetry slams and drag shows.

Like every Meow experience, what's great and occasionally maddening about The Real Unreal is the level of detail employed in its design. The space possesses a "choose your own adventure" quality that can easily overwhelm you, particularly when you realize clues and Easter eggs are hidden in virtually every corner, including the wallpaper. Signs in the marketplace offer phone numbers you can call on-site to hear prerecorded messages, and the simple act of turning on the kitchen faucet will provide a little sonic surprise. The most important takeaway is to look up, down, inside and around, as you’ll never quite know what you might discover.

The surrealistic surroundings align perfectly with the inherent weirdness that is Grapevine Mills. Down the corridor from the Rainforest Café's janky animatronics and down the hall from half-price couture at Neiman Marcus Last Call seems to be a perfect location for Meow Wolf, even if the idea of such a freewheeling concept in our magenta state might seem like a strange fit to outsiders. The Los Angeles Times recently published a story titled, "Meow Wolf is Ready for Texas, is Texas Ready for Meow Wolf?" Believe it or not, the answer is yes.

As any native Texan knows, our can-do spirit and stubborn individualism is what made this state notable in the first place, and there's plenty of both on display at The Real Unreal. The company vocally supports the LGBTQ+ community, and a mat outside the fictional Delaney's home proudly states, "All are Welcome." Meow Wolf's employees feel the same way, judging by the opening day preview. They seem delighted to be on a job that allows them to fully express themselves — sartorially and otherwise.

With works from 40 North Texas-based artists displayed, Meow Wolf has already provided a valuable outlet for local creative folks. With the Matt King Mystery Center (named after Meow's late co-founder) onsite to teach arty kids, The Real Unreal promises to become more than just another Insta-worthy experience. It just might be a spark that lets the next generation know it's OK — even preferable — to embrace your inherent weirdness. That fact alone makes it worth the entrance fee.