Las Vegas · Family of Four · 3 × Level 3A Passes at $138 + 1 Single Omega Mart Ticket at $62.50 · Off-Strip · About $625 All-In
We did two days at Area 15 in Las Vegas with the kids, and the verdict I have for you is the one I wish someone had given me before we booked. Omega Mart by Meow Wolf is worth the trip. Pretty much everything else we did with the multi-attraction pass was fine, but we could have skipped it, spent some extra time at the hotel pool, and maybe done the zip line at The Linq instead. Vika figured this out faster than I did. She returned her Level 3A pass on the spot and bought a single Omega Mart ticket for $62.50. The math on the rest of our trip looks better in hindsight if I had done the same. We spent about $625 all-in across two days. We could have done the same trip in one day for about $327. That is the article in one sentence.
This article is not sponsored. We bought our own passes for Area 15 Nobody at any attraction inside the building knew we were coming.
What Area 15 Actually Is
Area 15 is a black warehouse off Sahara, about a ten minute drive from the Strip. From the outside it looks like nothing. There is a crashed plane fuselage out front. There are GPS coordinates printed on the wall. There is no neon visible from the road. Once you walk in, the building is doing something I have not seen anywhere else, which is taking maybe twenty five different attractions, bars, restaurants, and immersive art experiences and putting them all under one roof. Most of it is gated by which level pass you bought, and the bigger packages look like a great deal until you do the math on whether you’ll actually use all the attractions.
The main concourse is built like the inside of a sci-fi mall. Black walls, neon ceiling, the Halleys Comet zip line track running overhead, screens everywhere, and a bar called Oddwood with a giant illuminated tree growing out of the middle of it. The kids slowed down inside the first thirty seconds. Vika and I did too. It is the kind of room you have to take a beat to read before you start moving, because it is louder and more saturated than your brain expects.
Day One Goes to Omega Mart, and Vika Outsmarts the Pass
If you are going to Area 15 with a family and you only have time for one thing, the answer is Omega Mart by Meow Wolf. It is the centerpiece of the building, both physically and in terms of what your pass dollar gets you. We did it on day one because I knew that if I did not, the rest of Area 15 would feel smaller than it is. Omega Mart is the headline. Everything else has to compete with it, and most of it loses.
Vika did the smart thing here. She walked up to the desk, told them she only wanted Omega Mart, and bought a single Omega Mart ticket for about $60. She returned the Level 3A pass she had already paid for ($138) and saved herself about $76 plus the second-day Lyft. Then she came in with the rest of us for Omega Mart, watched us go off to the rest of the attractions, and called it a day. Looking back, all four of us should have done that. The single-attraction route is a real option Area 15 does not advertise loudly, and it is the one that makes the most sense for a lot of families.
You walk through a spaceship-style corridor to enter, lit panels on either side, and then you come out into what looks at first like a normal supermarket. It takes a few seconds to start noticing that everything in the supermarket is wrong on purpose. The cereal box has a logo for “Oh, Those.” with cartoon batteries and staplers in the bowl. There is a “Who Told You This Was Butter, Do Not Eat” home freshening spray. There is a wall of giant gummy turkey legs. Emily got to one of the shelves and just stood there reading labels, picking things up, putting them back, picking up the next one, and laughing.
Then you find the portals. The walls of Omega Mart are not actually walls. They are doors. Some of them are obvious. A freezer case opens into a tunnel. A back office door opens into a glowing pink room. A big concrete looking panel slides aside. Once you start walking through them, the supermarket disappears, and you are inside the back half of the experience, which is harder to describe and the part Vika and the kids actually liked the most. Omega Mart is basically a walk-through and crawl-through art exhibit. Even if you are not into art, it is still worth it for the gag products and the fake brand names alone.
There is a story buried in there. Audio logs, characters, what looks like a missing person investigation. We did not try to follow it. The kids picked up bits of it, and the storyline made some of the rooms feel like they earned their weirdness. Plan two hours minimum if you want to do it properly. We did closer to three. Could have done four. We did not feel rushed when we walked out, and that mattered.
The Rest of Day One: Halleys Comet, the Laser Maze, and Birdly
After Omega Mart, Vika sat at Oddwood and the three of us went to spend the rest of the Level 3A passes. We did the Halleys Comet zip line above the concourse, a laser maze, and Birdly, the bird-flight VR rig. All three were fine. None of them are why you go to Area 15.
Halleys Comet is the indoor zip line that runs above the concourse. It is a short ride, not a real height, but the kids loved getting strapped in and flying over the crowd. Birdly is the bird-flight VR. You strap face-down onto a rig that lets you flap your arms like wings, the headset puts you above a city, and you fly. It is a short ride, maybe a few minutes, but Emily talked about it for a while after. The laser maze is what it sounds like. You crawl, duck, and step through a room full of green lasers without breaking the beams. Fun once.
Day Two: Racing Sim, Golf, a Robot in Space, and a Candy Run
Day two is the day I wish I had spent at the hotel pool. Not because the attractions were bad. They were not. The racing sim and the golf were both better than I expected. But the marginal value of a second day at the same venue, the cost of another Uber round trip, and the time we lost from the rest of the trip add up. The whole second day is what would not be in the article if I had bought a single-attraction Omega Mart ticket the way Vika did.
The Racing Sim Was the Surprise
Grand Prix Racing Sim is a row of low Formula-style cockpits with triple wraparound screens, a real wheel, real pedals, and a leaderboard. We sat down expecting an arcade. We got something closer to a properly tuned sim rig. The seats sit you reclined and low, your feet are out in front, and the speed of the screen plus the slight rumble of the rig is enough to make you forget you are inside a venue. Josh got into this one harder than I expected.
Five Iron Golf, the Hit-at-the-Screen Sim
Five Iron Golf is the simulator where you hit a real ball at a big screen and the screen tells you how badly you sliced. You step into a private bay, you have actual clubs, you swing for real. The bay itself was included in our pass, so it was already paid for. We dropped another $22 on drinks and snacks at the bar while we played, which is the part that isn’t covered. Good to know going in, because the in-bay food was the kind of thing you’d buy without thinking about it. We are not a golf family, but for an hour inside an air-conditioned bay with no tee time and no pretense, it was fine. If your kid has been asking about golf, this is a low-stakes way to find out whether they actually like it.
The Robot in Space VR Mission
The three of us did a VR mission where you are in outer space and you have to help fix a robot. Headsets on, tracked controllers in your hands, walking around a tracked floor. Josh and Emily got into it more than I did. Of all the day-two attractions, this is probably the one the kids would still bring up.
The Gift Shop Candy Run Is the Highlight They Still Talk About
This is the part of the article I did not see coming. The little store inside Area 15 has a wall of vintage sodas, a candy shelf, a chip shelf, and a small section of imported snacks. The kids spent more time browsing the store than they did at half the attractions. We walked out with bottles of weird soda, a stack of candy boxes, and a bag of chips that were honestly just fine. The chips were okay. The experience of buying them was the point. The kids still bring up the candy run when Vegas comes up at home.
Eating at Area 15
The food inside Area 15 is fine. There are quick service counters, a bar or two, and Oddwood for sit-down with the tree overhead. Most of it skews toward what makes sense for a venue full of people moving between attractions. The taco we got from a stand outside the building, sitting in the sun with the Strip in the distance, was the best thing we ate at the venue. That is not a knock on the inside food. It is a recommendation. If the weather is nice, eat outside.
What the Pass Levels Actually Get You
This is the part of Area 15 that confused us going in, and is probably the most useful thing in this article. The venue sells tiered pass bundles and individual attraction tickets, and the math is what flips the value calculation. Here is how the bundles compare to going single-attraction.
- Single Omega Mart ticket, about $60. What Vika ended up doing. The play if Omega Mart is the only thing you actually want, which for a lot of families it is.
- Level 1, from $85 per guest. 13 experiences and rides, no Omega Mart. Skip this. Without Omega Mart, you are not seeing what makes Area 15 special.
- Level 2, from $140 per guest. 18 experiences plus Omega Mart. The floor I would recommend if you actually want to do extras on top of Omega Mart in one visit. Skip if you are not going to use most of the 18 extras.
- Level 3A, listed from $200 per guest. 22 experiences plus Omega Mart. We bought four of these for $138 each on a promo, before Vika returned hers. This is the level that turns Area 15 into a two-day venue, and the level where the math starts pretending to be a deal whether you’ll use it or not. Even at the $138 price we paid, only worth it if you know going in you’ll do most of the 22.
- Level 3B, from $225 per guest. Same as 3A but with Universal Horror Unleashed instead of one of the lighter rides. Skip if your kids are young. Worth a look if your kids are older and into haunts.
- Level 4, from $375 per guest. 25 experiences plus Omega Mart and almost everything in the building. Hardcore option. Overkill for most families.
The trap is that the tiered packages look like a great deal until you ask yourself whether you’ll actually do the racing sim, the golf, the laser maze, Birdly, the VR missions, and so on. If you will use all of it, Level 3A is a good number. If you will not, the single-attraction Omega Mart ticket plus a Strip activity with the saved money is the better trip.
Would It Work for the Family?
For Omega Mart, yes, with a caveat. Bright lights at times, loud noises at times, narrow walkways. If you or your kids have any sensory sensitivity to those, prep yourself before walking in. Vika and I felt the saturation, and our kids are old enough to push through it. A younger kid (think five or six) is going to want to leave faster than you, and that’s something to plan for. The rest of the building is easier on that front. The racing sim is loud but in a normal arcade way. Five Iron Golf and Birdly are calm. The candy store is a candy store.
The Verdict
If you are going to Area 15 with the family and you can only do one thing, do Omega Mart. Single-attraction ticket, about $62.50 per guest. The walk-through and crawl-through art exhibit is the centerpiece, and it stands on its own as the reason to come. The gag products and the fake-brand humor work even if you are not into art. Vika and I really liked it, and that’s worth saying because we are not an immersive-art audience by default.
What We Should Have Done: Single Tickets for Four, One Day
Looking at our Chase statement after the trip and doing the math, here is what we should have done. Buy four single Omega Mart tickets, go for one day only, hit the little store on the way out for the candy run the kids loved, grab tacos from the food truck outside on the way to the Lyft. That is the trip.
- 4 × Omega Mart single tickets: $250
- Candy store and food truck: about $34
- Lyft round trip from the Strip: about $43
- Hypothetical total: about $327
What we actually spent across two days was about $625. That includes the three Level 3A passes ($415), Vika’s single Omega Mart ticket ($62.50), drinks and snacks at Five Iron and a couple of other in-venue food stops ($67), and two sets of Lyfts back and forth ($80). The savings on the single-ticket plan is about $300, plus a full second day of vacation back. That is half a day at the pool, or a sunset walk down the Strip, or doing the High Roller zip line at The Linq, which is the famous Strip-side zip line and a totally different experience. It is also one less Uber back from off-Strip late at night with two tired kids.
I am not saying the second day was bad. It was not. The racing sim was the surprise of the trip, Five Iron was a fun hour, the robot rescue VR was a hit with Josh and Emily, and the candy run wrote itself into family memory. All of it was fun because it was paid for and we were already there. None of it was fun in a way that justifies the $300 and the day if we had it to do over.
It is not a place we would go back to though. Once you have seen Omega Mart, you have seen Omega Mart. We are unlikely to do it twice. Same for the racing sim and the rest of the day-two attractions. They were fun because we paid for them. They were not fun in a way that justifies the second day, the second Uber, or the time we lost. Looking back, I would have bought a single Omega Mart ticket for each of us, spent the saved money and time at the hotel pool, and maybe done the High Roller zip line at The Linq, which is the famous Strip-side zip line and a totally different experience.
Bottom line: do Omega Mart on a single ticket, $62.50 per guest. Skip the multi-attraction passes unless you are sure you will use all the attractions, because otherwise it is about $300 in savings plus a full day of your trip back. The thing the kids still bring up is the candy run. The thing Vika and I still bring up is Omega Mart.
A full video walkthrough of our two days at Area 15 is on the way to the Travel and Food Guy YouTube channel. If you are planning a Vegas trip with kids and you want to see the inside of Omega Mart and what you’d be skipping with the package, head over and subscribe so you catch it when it goes live.
Have you done Omega Mart on a single ticket, or did you go the multi-attraction package route? Tell me in the comments which one was right for your family.
