Convergence Station (Denver, Colorado)
Given its almost-ironic placement wedged into real estate typically viewed as unusable – in the negative space of a highway interchange – Meow Wolf didn’t play coy with its Denver location. In fact, the massive showbuilding structure is practically an icon presiding over the interchange of I-25 and I-70. (You can also find Meow Wolf on the larger map we used to show Elitch Gardens’ location earlier on.)
Probably not coincidentally, this Meow Wolf – wedged at the confluence of traffic heading north, south, east, west, and every direction in between – is Convergence Station. The largest Meow Wolf exhibition yet (90,000 square feet across 4 stories), Convergence Station invites guests not into a home torn asunder nor a dystopian grocery store, but a cosmic oddity.
Decades ago, during a supernatural event known as the Convergence, various dimensions accidentally overlapped, with sections of each clipped off from their own worlds and timelines. Residents of these unusual places were left stranded and wracked with “Memory Storms” that scatter their memories of their home worlds…
And now, QDOT (that’s the multiversal Quantum Department of Transportation) has linked Earth to their transit system between Converged worlds. But before boarding the C-Line to begin their exploration, visitors are warned that bouts of forgetfulness and amnesia may strike as they experience the Convergence, and to hold onto their memories if they can. After all, in the Convergence, memories are currency.
C Street
The Transit Station luckily serves as a central space from which stairs and elevators diverge to the different worlds of Convergence Station, but most visitors tend to hop aboard the C-Line TRAM (that’s Transmonic Rift Access Mechanism), which carries guests through the various layers of the Convergence, depositing them first in the central layer of C Street.
Apparently once the sanitation district of a planet-sized ecumenopolis, C Street has become a melting pot of cultures since it was clipped off from its homeworld. It’s a grimy-but-lively, colorful, cultural, and creative cityscape whose residents embraced the Convergence and their severing from a landlord-ruled city.
(A $3 QPASS tap-card that can used throughout the experience stores in-universe credits called “mems” gathered in each world. Those credits can be built up to unlock a larger mystery and mythology of the Convergence and four key residents of the worlds who went missing when it occurred, with a culminating experience for those who follow the narrative to its conclusion… So dipping into and out of converged worlds is essential…)
Though various streets, alleys, storefronts, and vehicles, C Street is a day-glo metropolis where elections are held every 20 minutes (to prevent capitalist dictatorship) and where alien languages and cultures converge. Guests can explore a Cyber Cafe, the “Orpheum Monoplex” theater, the “Aquakota” night club, and more. It also serves as the connecting point to the other three worlds involved in the Convergence…
Ossuary
Ossuary is an underground world carved into caverns – all that’s left of a planet that experienced a massive Cataclysm long ago. The vaults of Ossuary are filled with Oss – crystals capable of encoding all-important memories – and maintained by Librarians. Ossuary is an almost spiritual realm presided over by the current Librarian.
Dozens of experiential chambers reside throughout Ossuary, like a “Mongovoo Temple” serving as a “time machine” to ancient Mongolia, a “Parlor of Birds” recording memories of extinct species, and the ancient “Oss Caves” filled with glowing memory crystals.
The Hall of Busts builds out the history of Ossuary by commemorating its many Librarians as far back as the first speaker of the stones, Lyra, each recorded speaking The Tome of Forgetting.
Eemia
Eemia is a piece of a Kingdom torn from its homeworld. Built around the Cathedral (originally designed digitally to be part of a virtual reality experience at Burning Man in 2020), the story of Eemia is that of a family torn apart.
As told in the ice-encased Book of Whales, the kingdom of Eemia was a thousand years into an unending ice age when the Convergence occured. Kaleidogoth High Priestess Araceli desperately searches for a way to “open the sky” and save her civilization while her brother believes Eemia’s future is better served by remaining in the Convergence. Meanwhile, their mother is one of the “Forgotten Four” – a representative of each world who disappeared at the moment of Convergence, and may or may not be related to its happening…
By reviving the Eemian “mechs” encased in ice around the explorable Cathedral, guests who dig into the lore of the Convergence Station can actually sit inside the mechs and control them. When done correctly, they project a puzzle into the sky above the Cathedral that – when solved – opens and wormhole and activates a realm-wide effect.
Numina
The final overlapped world, Numina is a living, sentient world. Mother nature, embodied. Every plant, animal, and structure on Numina is part of Numina – organelles of the larger creature. Pulsing with energy and light, this storybook world is a swamp of light and life, populated with otherworldly creatures that share its sentience.
Wonderfully, this world is curious about us and our linear view of time. When beings with free will (like humans) make decisions, it makes a timeline split. As such, Numina is a world that reaches out, forming portals into microcosms and branching timelines. An aquarium room offers clues that divert guests into other universes to assemble a numeric pattern of yet-unknown consequence. A rainbow passage connects Numina to the chambers of Ossuary. The “Womb Room” contains a conversation pit for reclining and relaxing.
At the center of the swamp is the Cosmohedron – a living creature in its own right, plus the central nucleus of Numina’s living self. This shell-like organism contains several experiences inside, like an interior color gardens on the ground floor, a Frog Egg nest in the middle level, and an observation tower on the third.
By time your visit to Convergence Station comes to an end, you’ll have traveled through four distinct worlds, each entirely climbable, explorable, and discoverable. You may have even learned the origin of the Convergence, the “Forgotten Four,” and QDOT. But no matter how you chose to interact with Convergence Station and its residents, you won’t forget it any time soon…
The Meow Wolf Magic
Through its four overlapped worlds, its complete immersion, and its artist-led design, Convergence Station again reaffirms that Meow Wolf didn’t just invent a new genre of themed entertainment – they remain at the forefront of it. Like Disneyland, Walt Disney World, and Shanghai Disneyland, their installations in Santa Fe, Las Vegas, and Denver reveal fascinating learning in less than a decade; each iteration more ambitious, more committed to storytelling, and more completely out-of-this-world than the one before.
Maybe more to the point, though, Meow Wolf isn’t just a model for a new kind of immersive, experiential, regional entertainment formula and a “next generation” museum experience. More importantly, it’s also a captivating example of the power of investing in creativity.
Every world, story, and character you’ll find in the House of Eternal Return, OmegaMart, and Convergence Station is an “original” – the kind of world-building that we talk about, but rarely see, from major industry players like Walt Disney Imagineering and Universal Creative. This is what happens when artists aren’t just employed; they’re empowered.
Look at what can happen! Entire universes exist within our reach. These places can be made real. They can change our thinking and expand our perspective. They can inspire us and transform us. Just as many of us were shaped by early EPCOT or our first visits to Disneyland, generations will remember Meow Wolf as the spark of inspiration that taught them a new way of seeing, touching, hearing, and thinking.
The lesson to learn is simple: think outside the box. You just may find a portal in the fridge.