Meow Wolf Houston's Radio Tave — Attraction in Houston

I'm going to try to give this a fair review. Overall 2/5. Would not go back. Would not recommend. However, there are some positives and I can see how some people might enjoy it more than I did.

Summary up front:

Value for money = 1/5 (not worth it) Interactive exhibits = 1/5 (not much to do) Size of venue = 5/5 (it's big, and just right) Exploration / maze-like feel = 3/5 Art / decor = 4/5 (slightly better than expected) Crowds = 1/5 (was way too crowded) Staff = 1/5 (the host was horrible) Goal / story / objective = 1/5 (???) Phone app = 2/5 (almost entirely pointless)

Value The cost was $50 per person, plus tax. So it's like amusement park prices for a family of 5. Parking is not free. We read something online about free parking, but it's wrong. It was $5 per hour to park, after the first hour. We were there for 3 hours, so it was only $10 plus tax. Not terribly expensive, but felt like an extra cash grab considering there was a lot of open parking in their own parking lot.

Interactive Exhibits Don't expect many interactive exhibits. Most of it is just walking into decorated rooms. There are some interactive parts, but not very many of them. Maybe 1 out of every 5 rooms have an interactive thing to do in there. Even then, it's usually something very simple like pushing a button to hear a beep. There are a few stations that let you interact more, but there were so many people there that it was nearly impossible to try any of them.

Size and Exploration The venue was bigger than I expected. It had more rooms than I thought it would have, which made it interesting to explore. If you like wandering around and opening doors to discover new places, you'll like it. If you wanted to play games or solve puzzles or try things, you won't really find that here. But I found that there was a lot to explore.

Art and Decor It's about what you might expect for a place like this. Lots of weird stuff, which I like. It was actually a little better than I expected. There were vibrant colors and weird alien stuff.

Crowds Awful. It was way too crowded. We were in a group of about 25 of us. We were right behind another group of 25-ish. As we entered the very first room, about 5 minutes later another group of 25 or so entered with us still in there. Considering the first room was just an office with nothing to do there, I got buyer's remorse pretty quickly, feeling like we had just been scammed. Luckily, there were other rooms and we all started to spread out. However, all the rooms were full with few exceptions for the entire time.

Staff Our host was pretty bad. She was hard to understand, and annoying. Not a lot to say here. I wish that we could have started it off better. The ticket booth person was great. But the host was one of the worst I've ever experienced anywhere. On the plus side, after entering the main area, we never saw workers again in the exploration areas.

Goal / Story Not sure if there was a story or any objective other than wandering and exploring. That's fine, but seems like it could have been more immersive if we knew some kind of backstory to this place or what we needed to do or look for. Maybe it goes back to having a bad host. We did look for the little brain sprouts, and we found a bunch of them, but they were really hard to find.

Phone app The app was awful. It was almost a complete waste of time to use the app except to keep track of how many areas we had discovered. We uninstalled it on the way out.

Overall, it was a 2/5. It's not the first one of these kinds of exhibits that we've been to, so we thought we knew what to expect. If it had more interactive things to do, that would have helped a lot. Some of the exploration was fun. We liked the statues and a few of the rooms. We liked little things that you had to discover. There just wasn't enough of that. It was mostly just crowded rooms and crowded...

If I could give zero stars, I would. This experience was extremely disappointing and completely misrepresented on the website. We were led to believe that there would be an engaging, guided experience—but upon arrival, we quickly realized that wasn’t the case. No one informed us ahead of time that we needed to download an app to receive any sort of narration or direction. The barcodes placed throughout the exhibit did nothing, and many of the interactive elements simply didn’t work.

A significant portion of the installations were either broken or shut down entirely, despite the high ticket prices. We encountered numerous non-functioning video screens and laptops that were supposed to be part of the experience. Additionally, the promised features—such as slides and climbing elements—were either missing or inaccessible.

The space was severely overcrowded, which made it difficult to explore or enjoy anything. Contrary to what the website claims, the staff was not actively engaged in creating an immersive experience. Instead, we were left to aimlessly wander through what felt more like a chaotic art exhibit filled with random props and trash than a thoughtfully designed attraction.

Overall, this was one of the most disappointing and frustrating ways I’ve ever spent money. The experience fell far short of expectations, and I would not recommend it to others. (By the way, in case you don’t know already, the tickets are nonrefundable, though it didn’t feel like we got our moneys worth because half of the stuff that was supposed to be included wasn’t included. There were doors that were locked. That looked like they were clearly supposed to be other ways to other rooms (specifically, the little green monster face that’s in one of the rooms had a key lock on the side of it like it opened, and there were several props like this, and when you peep through the crack, you could see that it went somewhere I feel like we only discovered like 10 of the rooms because most of them were either overcrowded or didn’t work or we’re locked.) when you have a building the size you need to have a capacity role I also think you guys need a separate night for adults to come in because there were children without parents wandering through the entire place ALONE not to mention the undeniable amount of nonworking features, I can’t believe I have to say it again there is a point in time where you end up in a room and you need to find an address to put into something for a password, but none of the computers would turn on I think that if you guys are going to add interactive parts, you need to have a tech on standby to come in and fix things if they need to be fixed it’s negligent to not fix those things and people pay crazy money for tickets not only that, but it was my birthdayThis was my birthday present and it was a huge letdown. and we were packed in there like sardines I could smell the person next to me that’s how close they were on top of all of that, the AC in there doesn’t work. It’s way too hot. I couldn’t walk five steps without...

Tldr: I really enjoyed my trip to meowolf, but i have some notes.

Pros: This is an amazing interactive exhibit. The art in every nook and cranny is exquisite. I knew we were going to be seeing art.... But i didnt realize just how much art. The sounds and music you are hearing were mixed by an artist. The games in the arcade were made by an artist. The voice acting and photos in the station are of artists. The entire experience you are walking into a giant piece of art that is living and breathing. My favorite piece was literally the entire radio studio.

I was also amazed at how accommodating the space was. My girl friend was having a bad body day, and needed to have her mobility device with us. Walk ways, and door ways were wide enough to accommodate her walker, and there were plenty of ramps and elevators so she was able to access everywhere anyone else could.

I love that there was a full dive bar in the middle of the exhibit. We didnt stop for food or drinks in there since it was packed, but we will do that next time. There is a photo booth in the dive bar! We got some very cute photos!

The gift shop had cool merch to!!! We are seriously thinking about buying annual passes!!!

The cons I planned poorly and we went opening weekend. There were sooooooo many people. While walk ways and door ways were big enough for my girlfriends mobility aid, they were not wide enough to accommodate other people coming in the opposite direction.

There were two areas that are not finished yet. Why do I feel kinda stiffed? I paid for the totally worth it tickets... And there are areas that arent ready yet???

Mothers were posting up in central areas while their children experienced the entire portal in record time (because they were running). And because there were so many children, I had to skip entire rooms that had interactive elements that children simply would not share with each other, let alone any adults who might want to have a turn. This is something that I can easily avoid in the future by going on a week day... But it was really starting to bug me.

The address takes you to the front of the building, and the only indicator to go to the back of the building are very small temporary signs.

There is no free parking. Parking is $5 per hour. Meowwolf heavily promotes that this portal can not be experienced in a couple hours .... So it's definitely a bummer that we spent 4 hours inside on upgraded tickets, and purchased drinks, and photos, only to then have to pay for parking. Turning what could have been a $100 trip into $220 trip. This is definitely a luxury experience, and they deliver, but that extra $20 was just salt in a wound...