She even took personal offense that some family opted not to fly across the country to see her creation. In about 24 hours, Solomon’s nearly two-years-in-development project was slated to have its grand opening for press and VIPs, and as far as she was concerned, nothing anyone said was going to change her mind. The Madcap Motel, however, hosted an event for friends and family. “You can get the jungle room, and your a la carte room service is an aerial artist who comes in doing backflips. “One day, is this a real motel, where the rooms are super-designed rooms like the Madonna Inn?” asks the 30-year-old business leader, referencing one of San Luis Obispo’s best known institutions. While the Madcap Motel is a walk-through experience with actors as guides who will usher those who linger in a space too long, Solomon, two days before the show opened in late April, was already envisioning its second life. Although she has an avalanche of bills that she won’t be able to put off too much longer, the last year of isolated life has her thinking grander, of foreseeing a world where we want more reality-breaking experiences. Solomon isn’t terribly worried about guests readjusting to indoor activities in a world recovering from a pandemic. That is, it’s an all-indoor space dedicated solely to friends and families crowding together for silly photo-ops and interactions with actors, a type of play that has gradually morphed over the decades from arcades to escape rooms to now themed spaces that encourage live-action role-playing.Īnd like Meow Wolf, which in Santa Fe, N.M., uses a suburban house as an entry point and in Las Vegas focuses on a twisted supermarket, Madcap Motel takes a relatively familiar setting and wants guests to see it in a new way, to blur the lines between what’s real and what’s fake, and to wonder if play can be extended beyond screens and boards into daily life.Īlong our journey in the Madcap Motel we’ll see some magic tricks, may be asked to sing, encounter characters who ask us to look for a missing sock - all of it mostly designed to get us to break down internal barriers that we carry with us throughout the day. The spot opened at the end of April after the pandemic forced its March 2020 grand opening gala to be called off on the day of, and it survives as a symbol of the sort of pre-pandemic entertainment that was increasingly all the rage before nationwide calls to shut down and stay in. Then came the pandemicĬOVID-19 put a pause on Meow Wolf’s most ambitious, risk-taking and topical endeavor yet: the grocery store-inspired Omega Mart, planned for Las Vegas. The Madcap Motel experience starts in a lobby with a flowery, elongated couch - a Rose Bowl Flea Market find that looks as if it belongs on a set of a ’70s-era television show - and is filled with photo ops and actors (beware the walking bush), plus a somewhat sinister story line about time travel, shifting dimensions and a philandering motel magnate.Įntertainment & Arts Meow Wolf was set to transform themed entertainment in Vegas and beyond. You check in, maybe for an hour or two, but there’s no spending the night or R-rated activity in these rooms lined with mirrors, descending lamps, mini-fish-tank-like dioramas, or oversize furniture designed to appear as if it’s floating. “They were like, ‘How will they know it’s not a motel?’ I said, ‘No, you’re kinda supposed to think it might be a motel.’” “A lot of my investors are older people,” says Madcap Motel founder Paige Solomon. Today, however, it’s a family or date-night playground, a fake motel outfitted in midcentury yellows and browns that at times looks like a real one, a relic from an era when Los Angeles wasn’t threaded with freeways. The word “madcap,” rendered in all caps, is hidden behind a gate - the fence a holdover from the downtown location’s past life as an industrial space.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |