Hello, people from the theme park! We’re taking a detour through Fantasyland this week and focusing on something that you’re sure to enjoy, but that you may not know much about yet. If you want to enjoy Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart spoiler-free, don’t be afraid! We’ve put a cutoff in the story below so you can still read a good part of it while you keep the surprises of the experience. (And if you’re craving this week’s theme park news, skip down for a roundup of all the links that are suitable for printing – or at least posting online.)
A VISIT TO OMEGA MART
This week we’re stepping “outside the berm,” as you might say, to discuss something similar and different: Omega Mart. It’s the newest immersive outpost from experimental design firm Meow Wolf, an artist collective entertainment group whose House of Eternal Return in Santa Fe put immersive experiences on the map when it debuted in 2016. Now, with their second permanent installation, they bring you the whimsy and otherworldliness of yet another slowly unfolding story in a 52,000 square meter themed space just minutes from the Las Vegas Strip.
The exhibit isn’t a theme park, gift shop, jungle gym, or museum, but somehow it channels everyone through the experience. After all, Omega Mart is a grocery store where everything from the produce to the dish soap is unique and almost everything is actually for sale. Unlike their first location in Santa Fe, the Las Vegas Outpost is a twist on consumption that ends up tempting you even more to go home with a psychedelic seltzer water or an air freshener that smells like “forbidden wisdom”. (Seriously.)
Nothing appears to be in Meow Wolf’s arsenal of experience, so of course there’s more to see than the deli and beverage fridges on the facade. (More on this below.) Every Meow Wolf room is an interactive playground for the senses, but what sets it apart is an underlying story that ties its unexpected elements together. The distribution of the details of each narrative is entirely up to each guest. So you can choose to analyze the different plot points or just look through the art exhibits that dissolve with each round – maybe through secret portals and unexpected passages, of which there are many.
Here in Vegas, however, Omega Mart fills a necessary void for people who want transportation experiences that are far from the nefarious norm of the city’s more mundane attractions. With the pre-pandemic proliferation of “Instagram museums” or exhibits merely serving as social media fodder, Meow Wolf’s artful creation is further evidence of how much fun one can have when an experience – one that is often mimicked, but it is never duplicated – space is made for it. After the Home of Eternal Return in Santa Fe, the Kaleidoscape ride from Elitch Garden, and another permanent haunted installation coming to Denver later this year, Omega Mart simply delivers and solidifies Meow Wolf’s place as an industry leader.
If you want to experience Omega Mart without knowing anything, get out there!
Before you get started, however, be sure to review current operating procedures: Meow Wolf is currently 80 percent busy and requires masks throughout the experience. For a specific part of Omega Mart – Halbverderb – be aware of the very specific dress code that must be followed to attend that part. (It’s worth clicking to know what to wear!)
SPOILER WARNING: OK, this is where you enter the great beyond. Spoilers below!
Meow Wolf’s permanent installation is in Las Vegas’ AREA15, which reads like a black-lit investor’s daydream after a childhood at Spencer’s Gifts. In total, Omega Mart is home to 60 “unique environments” in which over 300 creatives have created colorful, fascinating experiences. You will enter through the bizarre grocery store, but quickly find that the store itself is just a series of portals into something much larger. As you drive through one of the many refrigerator facades or hidden entrances, you’ll discover what’s really going on here, why the lights keep flickering, and why all those snacks might bite back.
Turn in one direction and you will come across an office that hides more than one secret. If you go in a different direction, you will be making impromptu music alongside strangers whose instruments are rays of light. Omega Mart’s backstory is tied to real-life topics – corporate greed, food additives, colonialism – and the most discovered day of the day, but there’s plenty to chew on for would-be gum and accomplishers who enjoy ticking off tasks. Here you will make your way through the exhibit using “boop” cards or plastic credit cards that will track your progress and unlock elements of the story throughout the installation. (Or if, like me, you’re mostly here to be impressed and delighted, there are plenty of ways to simply enjoy the colorful artwork while waiting for someone’s turn to slide in the “wormhole” to burst another dimension.)
It is becoming increasingly rare to experience something of this magnitude without intellectual property, but there are no Minions here, no Avengers, no Stormtroopers, nothing. Still, Meow Wolf’s secret sauce is something special. Unlike Instagram-related experiences that rely on the need for selfies that seem to have fallen by the wayside, the creations of this entertainment and arts group are vastly different from one another. I have not published anything of its deeper interiors here in order to keep Omega Mart secrets for others. Sometimes it can be difficult to explore freely with most of the attractions these days holding your hand through detailed storylines associated with blockbuster movies. However, whether you are in a room where the best way out is to grab a rope and climb. You’ll be glad you got into it.
In the end, my only complaint would be accessibility. The Las Vegas location was what I affectionately call “legal,” with warnings on the floor and walls and even an extremely detailed dress code just for pulling down the metal slides but more than once while walking the steepest stairs I am concerned that someone with knee strain may not be able to enjoy the entire space in the same way that others can.
Regardless, there’s nothing quite like returning from another world to the Omega Mart grocery store – a veritable exit through the gift shop – to drive home what this place is all about. At first, a story rooted in grocery stores, whose employees were quickly elevated to key workers amid a global pandemic, felt a little out of place. Now, at the end of a year spent on vaccinations finally becoming available nationwide, it’s shockingly refreshing to be in a store and freely browse and nurse antibacterial goosebumps to crush tangible items like pillow bags of chips and abnormal canned goods . It’s high time to enjoy yourself, and there are few better places to do it than here at Omega Mart.
LEFT! LEFT! LEFT!
