First look: The Dr. Seuss Experience is full of Instagram-ready rooms
The nine Instagram-ready rooms set up at Houston's George R. Brown Convention Center immerse visitors in the world of Theodor Geisel, from "The Cat in the Hat" to "There's a Wocket in My Pocket!"
Allison Bagley	May 12, 2021Updated: May 13, 2021, 9:06 am
Sneetches in the Sneetches Room at the interactive The Dr. Seuss Experience - The Wondrous World of Dr Seuss at the George R. Brown Convention Center, Monday, May 10, 2021, in Houston.
Photo: Karen Warren / Staff photographer
With the chance to swing in a forest of neon trees, ride a mirrored carousel and get lost in a balloon maze, beloved children's books have sprung to life at The Dr. Seuss Experience, making its U.S. debut May 15 at the George R. Brown Convention Center.
The 15,000-square-foot interactive experience is designed to delight adults and kids alike, organizers say, with nine separate Instagram-ready spaces that transport guests to the pages of the whimsical world of Theodor Seuss Geisel, the children's book author known as Dr. Seuss.
The self-guided tour kicks off in a maze of 5,000 individually suspended plastic balloons, reminiscent of the ones that fly through the air in "Oh, the Places You'll Go!," the book that has become a quintessential graduation gift.
While finding their way through the pathways, visitors turn the balloons to reveal words that are used to decode the phrase, "The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."
"It's … the centerpiece of the experience and arguably the biggest message of the experience," says Spenser Prelletz of Kilburn Live, the Los Angeles-based company that conceptualized the roving project in partnership with Dr. Seuss Enterprises.
The Dr. Seuss Experience
When: May 15-Aug. 15
Where: George R. Brown Convention Center, Exhibit Hall A, 1001 Avenida De Las Americas
Details: $28 (general admission nonpeak time adult - 13 and older); $23 (general admission nonpeak time child - 1 to 13); $23.75 (per ticket for a family four-pack nonpeak time - all ages); $33 (general admission peak time adult); $27 (general admission peak time child); $26.25 (per ticket for a family four-pack peak time - all ages); children younger than 12 months are free. Masks required on ages 5 and up. experienceseuss.com
Prelletz has been in Houston for four weeks overseeing the installation of the exhibit, which arrived downtown by way of 27 semi trucks. After debuting in late 2019 in Toronto, the activation was shuttered early because of the pandemic and is now making its return in Houston.
"Representing life's journeys, good times, bad times — that life is kind of like a maze sometimes," the difficult-to-traverse balloon path echoes the book's wisdom that the reader is off to great places, with challenges along the way, Prelletz says.
From inside the maze, visitors will spot the pink-carpeted Lorax room, a fan favorite, Prelletz says.
Enforcing the environmental lesson to be someone who "speaks for the trees," fantastical, striped trunks are topped with long-pile fur, which is tousled with a blower during closing hours to keep the tree tops puffy and seemingly in motion, like the images in the classic book.
"The Instagram crowd, they eat this room up," Prelletz says.
Making their way toward one-seater and two-seater swings that they can ride, guests will hear chirping birds and other cartoonish nature sounds — each room has a separate musical score.
Bedtime stories spring to life
It's whimsy like the chance to swing in the Lorax room that regularly drew multigenerational families to the show in Toronto, Kilburn Live's CEO Mark Manuel says.
"That's how long these books have been around," Manuel says. "It really struck me, how many books do we really have that grandparents read to parents, and you're reading that exact same book to your kids?"
Plenty of people come without children, he adds, noting that the experience is popular for dates and for groups of young adults who are drawn to its social-media-worthy aesthetic.
"Anything pink and pastel is an Instagram favorite," seconds Kilburn Live's James Samson, including the clover room of stalks topped with cotton-candylike blooms like those seen in "Horton Hears A Who!"
Guests can crouch down to "listen" to each of the 375 clovers. Thanks to embedded speakers, in a few select clovers, they'll be able to hear the soft screams coming from Whoville.
Kids love to run through the field, Samson says.
Touching is encouraged throughout the exhibit, he says. In addition to overnight cleaning, staff is on hand to disinfect surfaces between visitors.
Currently, 200 guests are permitted in each timed-entry ticket slot. Visitors can stay as long as they wish once they enter and are allowed to re-enter rooms. An average visit takes 60 to 90 minutes.
More mischief ahead
In dizzying disarray, "The Cat in the Hat" room offers a surprise in a top-hatted puppet, who balances on a ball above toppled tables. With a moving mouth, ears, eyes and body, the mischievous babysitter interacts in real time with guests, commenting on the color of their shirts and asking their names to engage them in conversation.
Intermittently, he shouts across the room to an animated goldfish housed inside a television set with a bowllike screen. Swimming to and from the guests, the fish warns that Mom soon will be home.
Guests can try to stack a teakettle, telephone, vase and other objects from the rainy-day story, then catch balls and scarves that fly from the lids of boxes.
"He's the ambassador of everything you see at Seuss," says Samson of the popular cat, whose likeness also walks through the exhibit for photo ops, along with Thing 1, Thing 2 and the Grinch.
The characters are most commonly spotted at the exhibit's entrance, near a retail portion offering Houston-specific Seuss hats and T-shirts.
The exhibit also offers the chance to ride a real carousel, which was purchased from Italy, or take an infinity photo in a mirrored space populated with 13 yellow Sneetches.
A nod to "Did I Ever Tell You How Lucky You Are?," a giant red "throm-dim-bu-lator" invites guests to turn gadgets, gizmos and levers, replacing machinery pieces and sticking pom-poms into pipes, which is "insanely popular for little kids," Prelletz says.
Seuss's silly, nonsensical words come to life in the "There's a Wocket in My Pocket!" room, where the challenge is to find 31 hidden objects, including a Zamp in a lamp and a Ghair under a chair. Guests can pose next to the Bofa, who sits on a sofa reading in sunglasses.
And, Christmas is on full display in the Grinch room, outfitted with twinkling lights and a sad tree with a single ornament. Visitors use fishing poles to try to lift green-and-red presents out of a spinning object.
"We hope when they go into each room, it's what you would expect when you walk into one of your favorite books," says Manuel, who says his firm worked with nine different fabricators, which employed about 1,000 craftspeople, to create 3-D versions of the wondrous worlds. "Each one is pretty much a life-size incarnation of those books," he says. "It's magical."
Allison Bagley is a Houston-based writer.
Allison Bagley
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