Denver’s Meow Wolf Convergence Station has been providing visitors with a family-friendly environment to explore its halls since its opening in 2021. The interactive art exhibit has gone to great lengths to ensure that all its visitors have something interesting to do while checking out their multiverse-themed gallery, regardless of age. Twice a month, however, Meow Wolf goes adult-only during their Adulti-Verse events, giving Denverites the unique opportunity to be like a kid again.
“I think the idea is that when you are at Meow Wolf, we want to give adults a chance to bring out their inner child and sense of play. You’re always able to do that when you’re here, but for a lot of folks, it’s harder to do that when there are actually kids around,” said Meow Wolf’s Operations Assistant Manager Cameron Scully. “At Adulti-Verse, you’re surrounded by like-minded folks and there’s a little bit of social lubrication from the booze, so it really lets you explore and play more freely.”
Typically, alcoholic beverages aren’t allowed in the exhibit space. But that all changes on the first and third Wednesday nights of every month. During Adult-Verse, pop-up bars are set up throughout the entire exhibit. Libations are no more than a couple hundred feet away at all times, transforming the exhibit into a bar-hopping experience.
The feeling in the building turns from a quieter walk-through exhibition into a vibrant and colorful party. That party might have a theme, such as a pajama party or a Grateful Dead rock concert. Music is blaring throughout the space, sometimes from live bands. Hoards of adults, drink in hand, gather around displays to converse about the interactive art they’re experiencing.
“[Adult-Verse] definitely has a different vibe,” Scully said. “It’s going to have more of a social, loose party kind of vibe, versus our normal exhibit days. With the Adulti-Verse, it has a little more pizzazz.”
Scully’s team puts in pain-staking work to help provide that little bit of extra pizzazz. They created what they call “activations,” or activities that provide an extra level of guest engagement with the exhibit.
Those so-called activations can range in scale from a simple game of cornhole and singing karaoke in the middle of the exhibition space, to stations where visitors can get their nails done. The biggest activations that Scully and his crew put on usually happen in the typically shuttered Noodle Bar in the C Street exhibit space. Sometimes customers can order alcoholic beverages from the Noodle Bar, while other times they can order more elaborate items, such as a mad-libs-style stories crafted and told by Meow Wolf’s actors.
“One activation that I’m specifically proud of was over Halloween when we were selling ‘creepypasta’ out of the noodle bar,” Scully said. “The guests would come up and we’d give them a menu, where they’d order three nouns, three verbs and three adjectives. We wrote these silly, kinda spooky stories and my team would do dramatic readings about Slender-Manicotti for example.”
Although pairing Meow Wolf with alcohol may seem like a no-brainer, it’s actually a give-and-take relationship from the company’s perspective. When the exhibit goes 21 and up, they’re taking away the opportunity for families to enjoy the experience on a night they perhaps wanted to.
“At the end of the day, we are a family experience. We know that when kids are out of school, we are busier. Those are the things that drive up our sales,” Scully said. “We are kinda segmenting our audience when we do [Adulti-Verse]. Depending on the time of year, we’re potentially having folks who would be buying a ticket not come that evening.”
The company believes it has struck a perfect balance between regular exhibit dates and Adulti-Verse nights. By hosting their adult-only events on a Wednesday night, they can drive up sales during a typically slow time.
“[Adulti-Verse] is happening on Wednesday nights, those aren’t traditionally when we see a ton of business,” Scully said. “We hope [Adulti-Verse] pushes some business to that time, and there’s obviously good margins on selling alcohol in the exhibit.”
Money aside, the biggest advantage of putting on an event like Adulti-Verse for Meow Wolf is the opportunity to provide something fun for Denverites. Although the exhibit has become a mecca for tourists visiting the city since its opening, they see Adulti-Verse as a way to give back to the locals.
“We are an exhibit in Denver and we serve the Denver area,” Scully said. “We love our out-of-state visitors, but we really want to make sure we are giving something to the people who live here.”
