HIDDEN FOLKS FACTORY RIDDLE PLUS

Tickets were $80 each plus a $25 (25 min) uber ride each way from downtown San Francisco making for an expensive 90 minutes of entertainment.īut, this is a one-of-a-kind experience and I’m happy to have had it. I personally would have preferred a tour of the house rather than the experience of our story. I was a tad disappointed that we only saw just a handful of rooms, even though each was more creative than the last and that we were not offered ANY opportunity to take photos inside.

The imagination infused into every ounce of this house - from the concept itself, to the decor, the costume, and even the story that we were a part of, was beyond impressive!

We were paired with another couple and guided through the ‘adventure’ by a lovely and talented Facilitator who had to encourage each of us to participate and stay sincere to the experience. The only option offered during the month we visited was ‘Down The Rabbit Hole’.

It’s not really ‘a museum’ but rather an ornately decorated, private home by a former circus performer - think of it as ‘a guided escape room on imagination steroids, sprinkled with a bit of self discovery’. In a very unassuming yet gorgeous neighborhood, we visited the Gregangelo Museum. When we get a chance next time we visit the Bay Area, we hope to do the parallel outdoor tour of the same home. Some aspects were invariably a little bit disappointing, or even forced, but overall experience was generally positive, a high-bandwidth multisensory tour cum shallow counseling. They are hard to describe, which uncategorizability is part of their charm. We’ve been to comparable curated homes filled with idiosyncratic collections (such as House on the Rock in Wisconsin and the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Culver City, LA), and although they are quite different from each another, i’d include this alongside them as a campier alternative with active guidance. The official web site, which i browsed afterwards, is attractive and creative, but, curiously, the “Frequent Asked Questions” (sic) is empty. (I live in Japan where that sort of thing is common.) I think that the house interior is too precious to admit street shoes (did the owner really wear his roller skates into the house?!), and that tours should have guests change into or bring their own indoors slippers. Our guide (from Silver Spring, MD, not far from where i grew up) was engaged and experienced, using improvisational theatrical skills to enable introspection and sharing among the guests. For whatever reasons, i hadn’t known about some worries of my wife until she was prompted to reveal them to our group, and such insight alone was worth the price of admission. The performance artistic tour isn’t for everyone, but it was for us. Frankly, the admission ticket might be a tad much for normal tourists. The location is a bit off the beaten tourist tracks, but we could get there easily by Muni, SF’s under-appreciated transit system. As an “Alice in Wonderland” fan, i appreciated occasional references to Wonderland, the Looking Glass, and the Rabbit Hole. My wife and i joined three strangers and enjoyed the truly fabulous interior design, and the “Facilitator” guide’s use of docent-like explanations as opportunities for probing therapeutic exercises (such as using interior props as encouragement to discover and publicly express specific stresses and personal resolutions). I had a vague idea that it was some kind of interactive interior tour, but resisted looking at reviews (like this one!) so as to go in fresh, as unbiased as possible. We went to the Gregangelo Museum with deliberately limited knowledge about what to expect.

Hidden folks factory riddle