Is it too early to start a thread discussing surprises / favorite moments / questions / theories you've found at Houston Radio Tave? Flag spoilers of course for those who haven't visited / don't want to know!!!

They can’t get rid of me that easy.

Apparently there is an internet radio station for ETNL. Haven't seen this posted on here so thought I would.

ETNL Site

https://www.etnl.radio/

Radio Stream

https://s3.radio.co/see538f48c/listen

Status Url

https://public.radio.co/stations/see538f48c/status

Im going to Texas and only have time to go and visit one meow wolf exhibit. Should I go to the real unreal or radio tave?

Web site suggests to rideshare but we’re traveling in from outside of town. Can anyone recommend parking options other than the ten spots behind the building?

Hey r/MeowWolf! We are the Meow Wolf Story Team, the ones creating the lore, stories, and connections that power the worlds you experience at our exhibitions. With Radio Tave opening tomorrow in Houston, we’re excited to answer your questions about the universe we've been building, how the stories from our locations intertwine, and what might be next.

We have a few key members of our team here with us:

• Devon Giehl (Our Boss)
• Billiam Rodgers (Story Lead)
• Collin Stapleton (Story Lead)
• Elena Nava (Associate Writer)
• James Longmire (Story Development Director)
• Julianne Aguilar (Story Lead)
• Michael Wilson (Sr Story Editor & Lore Keeper)

We'll introduce ourselves in the comments (and maybe show our faces), but we’re all here to talk about how we bring Meow Wolf’s worlds to life. Whether you’re curious about Radio Tave, how our exhibitions connect, or what's next for the Meow Wolf multiverse, the stage is yours!

We’ll be here 11-1ish MT to answer all your questions. Ask Us Anything!

https://preview.redd.it/s8zq8uqrtwxd1.png?width=1247&format=png&auto=webp&s=9abe4bb8cdea3d61b41be52650b3a1698be40619

Thank you all so so so much. This was a lot of fun. We hope to do it again soon.

Join us today for an AMA with the Meow Wolf Story Team! They'll be posting from u/MeowWolfStoryTeam at 8 AM PT/11 AM ET and the thread will go live at at 10 AM PT/1 PM ET. Looking forward to your questions!

Disclosure: Meow Wolf invited both mods of this sub to attend the preview day (soft opening), they provided complimentary admission as well as food and beverages. All other travel expenses (flight & hotel) we paid ourselves. This review is my opinion alone. I'm sure the other mod JCBQ01 will write his own in the near future too.

Positives:

Cowboix Hevven - I found myself typing out the phrase "themed dining" and deleted my entire paragraph because Coyboix Hevven is so much more. You can't really even get to the bar directly from the lobby, rather you get there through the exhibit...It exists as a part of the exhibit, the walls are covered in lore and it's one of the most detail-rich rooms in the building. Every detail to recreate a dive bar new from scratch has been thought through. The bar's upholstery has been torn and patched up with duct tape which is now peeling around the edges. There's a junky looking "house phone" at the end of the bar which is connected to VOCS the phone system connecting all exhibits. There's even a puzzle which can be activated through the jukebox that will leave you laughing with delight. The room's art includes a large piece dedicated to Matt King, the love and care the artists put into his memorial conveyed how much he meant to them.

Like any good dive bar the upholstery was torn and has been patched using duct tape.

Dark, loud and unsettling art - Starting first with the underground excavation room, it's not scary in the conventional sense, nobody is going to jump out and say boo, but a sensitive child might find it intimidating with lighting that is dim/stark/harsh, and also a foreboding soundtrack. It gave me emotions I hadn't felt in a Meow Wolf before. I love the underground excavation room for how dark and foreboding it is, keep the volume loud, don't change a thing. Over time in Denver I feel like volume levels have crept downward, Vertimetric (aka the triangle room) in particular has lost much of it's impact and bass with the soundtrack hardly audible over the sound of opening and closing doors. Radio Tave is an exhibit all about sound and music, please keep the volume levels where they're at now.

Those with mechanophobia might find the morass of mechanical ducts room to be challenging. The walk path feels narrow so the art is up in your face. Again, the volume was set at the perfect level to be impactful in this room.

Also Aaron (the coral man)... as I walked around the corner and saw a dark figure seated there on the other side of the room... That shit was creepy. Perfect, no notes.

To be clear, I'm saying yes keep making unsettling art that challenges us a little bit and makes us feel new things.

Creepypasta when you see this from across the room.

Obsidiodyssey - Janell Langford is a brilliant artist and I love that she was given six rooms. The highlight of Obsidiodyssey is a literal dance party, it's the most infectiously high energy room in any Meow Wolf in any city. Sometimes with interactive art you push a button and you're not really sure if it did anything... well on the DJ booth here it's real clear what effect the button or knob had. There are five other rooms in Obsidiodyssey and although I've never been big into lore (that's more JCBQ01's thing), every time I walked through the study/studio room other guests were pouring over lore artifacts there with rapt focus.

One of the best interactive pieces.

Dioramas and assemblage art - They're bigger and more fabulous than ever before. Scaling up the size of these has correspondingly increased my feelings of delight. My favorite "diorama" is actually the size of a small room, hidden behind an electrical panel. Yes it's an entire room you can't go inside of, you can only view it by looking through an electrical panel door. Absurd use of square footage, I love it.

ETNL - Meow Wolf made sure every mundane detail was perfect in this rural community radio station. At first glance it's all so ordinary looking until you look closer and start seeing things are just a little bit off.

To me this was the most liminal space. So mundane at first glance it was eerie.

Felix - Felix is the most adorable creature Meow Wolf has ever created. (JCBQ01 agrees) I love that Felix has a single animatronic movement, less really is more. Please I beg you take care of Felix and his fur. If he's allowed to get grimy and worn, I worry he'll go from adorable to sad and depressing. Also his motor is kind of loud, I thought it was the nearby elevator before figuring out the deep mechanical churn noise was coming from Felix's animatronics.

Felix, host of Twilight Felix, an evening radio show.

The cat in the electrical rack - Perfect no notes. I like that there's a lore clue on the wall nearby so guests have a better chance of solving it, or even knowing that it's a puzzle, without having to ask a worker for hints. I love that there's multiple ways to solve it, stroking it's cheek will get a different result than setting the frequency dials to a certain number. About puzzle difficulty... Denver is epic but figuring out how to "open the sky" is VERY hard to figure out on your own - not until you get to page 20 of the Book Of Whales (which is kept in a different room) does it even cryptically hint at how to solve the puzzle "Not all of Eemia is aligned. The opening of the sky may impact our interlocked worlds." The cat in the electrical rack is a much more accessible level of difficulty for general guests to enjoy in my opinion. The sound design is also fantastic in how they imagined how a cat living in digital equipment would sound like.

The Transmission Event - I like that there's a theatrical sequence (tied to lore) for guests to enjoy which doesn't require a puzzle be solved. I love how it's manifested differently in different rooms. "Memory Storms" travel throughout the exhibit in Denver but if you're distracted they can be easy to miss. There's no missing it when The Event happens in Houston. The 30 minute timing is perfect for ensuring guests will get to experience it, while not being overly-frequent which would negatively impact how "special" the event feels.

Things that are a mix of good and bad:

Fabrication quality continues to improve and resulted in some spectacular art. One of my favorites is the faux-stone (cement plaster) used to sculpt the trees, stonework and other elements in the forest, absolutely brilliant craftsmanship. For high-touch elements, hopefully something that is cleanly fabricated will also perform better from a durability perspective. But also high touch elements, and most everything within human reach range, is increasingly made from non-combustible impervious materials which are less of a joy to interact with using touch. I'm concerned Meow Wolf is straying increasingly far from the cobbled together charm of Santa Fe. I look at Santa Fe and the craftsmanship of some elements there says to me "I've been up for 48 hours hopped up on redbull trying to finish this and working only with materials I salvaged from a dumpster" which is increasingly absent from Houston. Brilliant fabrication like the forest is amazing, but it needs to be balanced with more hot-glued-trash in my opinion.

Meow Wolf has dramatically stepped up their lighting design to create more atmosphere and effect (good). But so often at Houston I would look upwards in a room and not see a continuation of the art, rather I would see a slick lighting rig and black grid ceiling above that. Ceilings like the example photo from Santa Fe are increasingly rare at Radio Tave.

Example of an artistic ceiling from Santa Fe

Weaknesses:

It's hard to quantify this, but the layout and flow felt off for me during free wandering and exploration. I kept getting lost only to end up back at the same spot - Not in a good way like HOER, because at HOER you keep returning to the house from uniquely different ways. At Houston it felt like I was getting stuck in a rut and some areas you had to make a deliberate effort to get to.

It felt like many of the featured local artists were flat 2D mural rooms. Yes there were exceptions, I loved the pomegranate room and underground excavation room, if I remember correctly these are local artists. But more often than not, flat 2D mural rooms were local artists.

The kitchen in Cowboix Hevvven is very small with limited capabilities, for example it doesn't have a grease-trap which means they can't fry things. This sort of works for the dive bar theme, but don't expect the level of offerings Denver has. Entrees are served with a pile of kettle chips, my suggestion would be to add a cup of coleslaw, perhaps a vinegar base for those non-dairy guests. Also the specialty cocktail menu we were shown on the preview day had no mocktails on it.

Although the food offerings are limited, everything I sampled was of good quality.

The market street is too wide open in the central area by the Fish ATM and felt empty or unfinished. u/JCBQ01 and I both wondered if perhaps a centerpiece had been planned to fill the space and it was later cut.

The center area of the market street feels too wide open.

Conclusion:

Sorry I have no way of stitching the whole experience up into a neat package. Like all Meow Wolf experiences, this one is impossibly deep and multifaceted and your experience is shaped by the type of elements you gravitate towards for further exploration. I didn't get into lore because firstly that's JCBQ01's area of expertise, and also the computers weren't operational yet during our visit.

If you're curious about square footage here's the size of each exhibit: (which I got from MW's PR staff)

• House of Eternal Return - 20 k
• Omega Mart - 52 k
• Convergence Station - 90 k
• The Real Unreal - 29 k
• Radio Tave - 29 k

Houston has some reoccurring elements like the glow aquarium and arcade, but IMO the artists deliver a new twist on these every time. Meow Wolf continues to progress as a company and it shows in the increasing quality and sophistication of their art, but please don't stay too far from the "hot glued trash" handmade aesthetic of Santa Fe. But overall you'll notice I spent far more time raving about the positives that outweigh the few negatives. Is Radio Tave worth visiting? Yes absolutely.

I am wondering about the Sorce Flow Optimizer Achievement at Omega Mart. Is it gone? When I asked the employees they said there was only eleven (not counting this one). I saw this achievement online and I came up short about it. By the way is there any other achievements that anyone can think of?

As it states in the title I lost my qpass :( do I have to start over collecting mems? Any responses would help! Thanks in advance!

There was one in late Jan, not sure how regularly they have them.

Basically as the title says! I’m super excited to work at such a unique place, I’ve been bartending for years and I’m just so ecstatic to be able to see so many different people everyday.

See title for my question. Sorry if this has been addressed already!