Before we get to the third Meow Wolf location, we have to take a short side trip that’s right up the alley of most themed entertainment design enthusiasts…
After The House of Eternal Return and OmegaMart became respective destinations for artists, themed entertainment fans, families, road trippers, and otherwise trippers, it makes sense that the arrival of Meow Wolf in a third city would be a cause for excitement for many who are in-the-know…
But certainly, it makes sense that most people aren’t exactly sure what “Meow Wolf” is, does, or means. So when the organization set their sights on Denver, they entered the community in a very clever way…
Kaleidoscape (Denver, Colorado – Elitch Gardens)
Located right in downtown Denver on the South Platte River resides Elitch Gardens. At one time donning the Six Flags banner, Elitch Gardens is – by former Six Flags standards – a fairly small park, counting a Vekoma Boomerang and an SLC (above) as its headlining coasters.
It makes sense. Elitch Gardens is hemmed in by the river, downtown sprawl, and Ball Arena, where the Denver Nuggets play. Plans to redevelop the high-demand land the park occupies have been floated for years, and it’s expected that within the decade, Elitch Gardens will close for good.
When it does, its rides will likely be auctioned off, relocated to other Premier Parks properties, or – locals hope – moved to a new location in Denver (which would be the park’s second relocation. It only arrived at its current downtown spot in 1995 after having spent more than a century in the West Highland neighborhood).
But that didn’t stop Meow Wolf from using it as an unorthodox introduction…
In 2018, the park’s Ghost Blasters shooting dark ride closed for good. The Sally-manufactured off-the-shelf attraction was one of many similar installations to be found across smaller amusement parks, boardwalks, and family entertainment centers, as well as five Cedar Fair parks. In its place, Elitch Gardens welcomed Meow Wolf’s Kaleidoscape.
Designed by seven Denver-based artists as part of the Meow Wolf collective, Kaleidoscape brilliantly purposes the bones of a simple Sally spook house into a vivid, abstract, colorful explosion of visuals. Apparently, it’s meant to follow the journey of a single spec of light as it expands to become a planet-sized entity. In practice, guests are armed with ghost-blasters-turned-“Conglomatrons” able to condense objects down into infinitesimally small, dense points as they’re carted through the surreal environment.
True to form, the sights and sounds you’ll find in the void of Kaleidoscape are sometimes beautiful, sometimes trippy, sometimes startling, and sometimes all three at once. Meow Wolf’s artists even stripped many of the animatronics and effects leftover from Ghost Blasters and repurposed them in new ways.
Using those animatronics, effects, projection, blacklight, and music, Kaleidoscape easily becomes one of the most unusual dark ride experiences on Earth, giving Hard Rock Park’s legendarily-heady, ethereal, and trance-like “Nights in White Satin: The Trip” a run for its money.
If you doubt you’ll be able to make it to Elitch Gardens, it’s worth going full-screen on a ride-through this amorphous, abstract, unusual dark ride, sitting back, and letting it unfold before you without fast-fowarding through…
More to the point, it’s certainly one way to ingratiate yourself to the community and convey exactly what you’re about… And all of it lead up to the opening of Meow Wolf’s third permanent installation…