Home Care In Grapevine, TX

As the crowds have grown, Grapevine officials are looking into how to improve crowd control and safety for next year.

GRAPEVINE, Texas — Data may back up Grapevine’s title of “Christmas Capital of Texas.”

Grapevine has more than 1,400 holiday events over 40 days with everything from holiday lights and drone shows, Grapevine Vintage Railroad’s North Pole Express and more. Now that the holidays are over, though, city officials are looking into data from the 2023 season and how to improve for next year.

Nearly 24,000 were estimated to have visited Main Street from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Dec. 2 for events, nearly 22,000 from 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Dec. 9, and nearly 34,000 between 5 p.m. to 11 p.m. Dec. 16, market research manager Steven Jones said during a recent city council meeting.

The last six weeks of the year accounted for 16% of all visits to Main Street in 2023, Jones said. About 30% of all holiday visits occurred between 6 p.m. and 9 p.m., he said.

TexRail, a hybrid rail line that operates between downtown Fort Worth and DFW Airport with stations in North Richland Hills and Grapevine, also reported its highest ridership date in 2023 at 1,970 the day Grapevine lit its Christmas tree during its annual Carol of Lights Nov. 20, 2023, Jones added.

As the event has grown, though, so have concerns about traffic and crowd control and safety.

“It was incredibly busy, the data supports that,” Grapevine City Manager Bruno Rumbelow said. “Carol of Lights was as big as it’s ever been, the drone shows added to an already incredibly busy Saturday. It comes with a whole host of challenges when you’re dealing with the numbers that we’re dealing with. We think we’ve dealt with them fairly effectively, but I also think it’s important to kind of keep digging and keep making changes in order to be able to have the advantage that we all want which is robust visitation during that time but also to maybe space it out and to do it in such a way that it is manageable.”

“I think the big concern I had, though, is after it, getting out there were too many people moving or trying to move at one time and if something had happened…some people could have really got hurt if they panicked. We need some pathways, I think, and maybe we need to break the crowd up to exit in segments – do something so they’re not all just pushing to get out at one time,” Grapevine Mayor William Tate said.

Despite some crowd control concerns, Tate said he believed security was good during the event.

Tate also said there were also concerns about not enough food for attendees and lines being too long.

“This is huge I’ve never seen this before,” added city councilman Paul Slechta. “Carol of Lights was a little crazy – just the amount of people that were out there so close to the train tracks … that’s really something I just really want to look at next year. Carol of Lights; the crowds were huge, that train crossing was a big concern.”

Councilman Chris Coy suggested changing the event calendar to help avoid train concerns.

“We know when the trains are coming through, we know the train schedule, so I think it’s a matter of building the schedule for our event around when the trains are going to be coming through, and therefore when the trains aren’t going to be coming through so we can move the people across the railroad track further north for the rest of the festivities that evening."

Planning for the 2024 holiday season will continue with another presentation about potential changes for 2024 at city council expected in the next month and a half.

Among changes already made for the event in recent years are placing staff at railroad crossings, increasing presence of public safety staff within the Christmas Capital of Texas event area, adding fire lanes to side streets for emergency access, and converting on-street parking to pedestrian-friendly barricaded walkways during peak times, said Jones.

Other headlines:

WHO: Murray Cohen, a commercial pilot and volunteer fossil-hunter with the Perot Museum of Nature and Science, in Dallas, and the rest of the museum’s paleontology team.

WHAT: A newly discovered plant-eating species of small dinosaur, Ampelognathus coheni, that lived in North Texas 96 million years ago.

WHY IT’S SO GREAT: In September 2019, Murray Cohen, a pilot who volunteers with Dallas’s Perot Museum, was fossil-hunting on his own when he found a two-inch-long jawbone in a sandy area near Grapevine Lake’s spillway, about thirty miles northwest of downtown Dallas. He later handed the muddy bit of bone over to the Perot’s researchers, who cleaned it carefully under a microscope in a lab with miniature needles to get a better look. They thought at first that the jawbone might have belonged to a crocodile.

Then the scientists spotted an even smaller bone feature that once connected the lower jaw to a beak. That was thrilling, recalls Ron Tykoski, the Perot’s vice president of science and curator of vertebrate paleontology, because it meant the fossil could only be from one kind of creature: a dinosaur.

Tykoski’s team began trying to identify the bone. Texas was once home to about twenty of the more than three hundred dinosaur species known worldwide. A few other, much larger dinosaurs had similar features to the new find and lived in that area, but none seemed to match. Tykoski said that while the team wondered if it could be a new species, they spent four years trying to prove that assumption wrong. “After trying really hard for a long while to make it fit into previously known animals, we were getting frustrated by that,” Tykoski says. “If you do that enough, if you try to fit it into what’s known, then you have to start scratching your head, going, ‘Is this thing unknown?’ ”

Finally, earlier this year, Tykoski and two other researchers submitted a paper to the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology announcing they had identified a new species. They called it Ampelognathus coheni. In Greek, ampelos means “grapevine,” gnathos means “jaw,” and coheni is a nod to Cohen, the volunteer who made the initial discovery. This is the first new dinosaur species identified in Texas since 2010.

Cohen declined to be interviewed, but Tykoski said he often hikes in the area and brings all kinds of fossils to the museum for their researchers to clean and study. All of them help paint a more complete picture of prehistoric Texas. “There’s only a couple of us who are professional paleontologists in the region, and we can’t be in all these places,” Tykoski said. “We depend heavily on volunteers or just fossil enthusiasts who like to go out and like to fossil hunt, and the good ones who know that when they find something really potentially significant, to bring it to our attention.”

The discovery is part of a larger program at the Perot to research and catalog the expansive prehistory of North Texas. This region was once the coast of a large interior seaway, making it fertile ground for all kinds of life—but Tykoski says we’re still learning a lot about what the area now known as Dallas–Fort Worth looked like and what kinds of plants and animals lived there.

At the Perot, paleontologists, paleobotanists, geologists, sedimentologists, and more are teaming up with volunteers like Cohen to search for clues in fossil-rich soil, such as that found near the shores of Grapevine Lake. Tykoski says the site is on land owned by the Army Corps of Engineers, so the fossil is property of the federal government, but the Perot curates and catalogs all fossils found there.

Unlike in the Mountain West, where exposed soil in the badlands of Montana, Wyoming, and even as far north as Alberta, Canada, make fossil sites easily accessible, the landscape of North Texas makes dino digs a little more complicated. Not only has the region been paved over with roads, buildings, and parking lots, but the thick vegetation of our landscape makes it all the more difficult to find fossils. Plus, a whopping 96 percent of the state’s land is privately owned. For these reasons, researchers such as Tykoski often partner with local volunteers.

“We realized there were gaps in our knowledge of things happening paleontologically here, closer to North Texas,” Tykoski says. “There are some discoveries to be made and questions to be asked and answered. This is just part of the onset of a new focus, a new emphasis of our program. What’s the little story of us—what was happening in our backyard?”

Ampelognathus coheni fits into that story. Tykoski says the dino was quite small, maybe the size of a standard schnauzer. It was a plant-eater, and would’ve walked on four legs, but had the ability to stand on two to reach taller vegetation. Tykoski says scientists have found fossils of the kinds of plants it ate, as well as the kinds of prehistoric predators that ate it nearly 96 million years ago.

Since the tiny jaw is the only piece of Ampelognathus coheni that’s been found, little else is known about the species.

“We’re pretty sure this is reasonably close to adult size, our little guy here, just based on the animals it’s most closely related to, but it could have been bigger,” Tykoski says. “You never know until we find more of a skeleton.” So the next time you’re hiking in Texas, keep an eye out. You might be walking right past a one-of-a-kind fossil.

A Texas town is celebrating its most popular time of the year as it is officially the Christmas Capital of Texas.

Grapevine, Texas — in the heart of the Dallas Fort Worth metroplex — is home to more than 50,000 people. It becomes even more popular around the holidays.

In 2009, the Texas State Senate proclaimed the town the Christmas Capital of Texas after its extreme efforts at celebrating the holiday season.

THE 10 BEST CHRISTMAS TOWNS IN AMERICA

Grapevine Convention & Visitors Bureau director of communications Elizabeth Schrack told Fox News Digital how the town makes sure to deck the halls.

"We have more than 1,400 events over 40 days," she said.

(Visit Grapevine)

Some of the events include a North Pole Express, which typically sells out in July, the Gaylord Texan Resort ICE! Display, the Great Wolf Lodge Snowland activity display and the Texas-sized outdoor ice-skating rink in the main street district of town.

TEXAS TOWN FIGHTS TO SAVE MYSTERIOUS CHRISTMAS TREE

The town also hosts a Carol of the Lights festival each year, which kicks off the Christmas season.

"Being able to see families and friends and couples come out here all dressed up in their festive Christmas clothes and pjs, smiling, taking in the sights and sounds of the seasons — we just love it!"

This year's Carol of the Lights marked the 35th annual event.

It took place on the Monday before Thanksgiving — and the main street in Grapevine was shut down for the lighting of the Christmas tree.

"We love celebrating holidays here," Schrack said.

(Visit Grapevine)

Those visiting Grapevine can also experience Christmas tribute concerts and Christmas movies during the holidays, with showings of "Elf," "Home Alone," "Miracle on 34th Street" and more.

"Being able to see families and friends and couples come out here all dressed up in their festive Christmas clothes and PJs, smiling, taking in the sights and sounds of the seasons — we just love it," she said.

CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTER

Outside the holidays, Grapevine, Texas, is also known for bringing in hundreds of thousands of people for various events.

(Visit Grapevine)

GrapeFest - A Texas Wine Experience draws in more than 200,000 people during the four-day event in September. During the occasion, consumers can enjoy wine tastings and live entertainment.

CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP

Main Street Fest - A Craft Brew Experience draws in more than 150,000 people during the three-day event in May. Attendees get to enjoy live music, craft beverage experiences, shopping and more.

For more information on planning a trip to visit the Christmas Capital of Texas, anyone can visit GrapevineTexasUSA.com.

For more Lifestyle articles, visit www.foxnews.com/lifestyle.

The immersive experience featuring Texas artists' technicolor creations has opened in Grapevine

July 18, 2023

Nothing is as it seems under the multicolored neon lights at Meow Wolf Grapevine, the long-awaited immersive art exhibition that just opened in Texas. What looks like a conventional suburban house is really an entrance to an imaginary world. A refrigerator leads to dozens of kaleidoscope art installations. Paintings of anthropomorphic paletas adorn a room with flashing strobe lights.

Titled The Real Unreal, the exhibit is something between an art gallery, carnival, and escape room. What makes it even more of a trip is its location: the inside of a gutted Bed Bath & Beyond at Grapevine Mills Mall.

Meow Wolf, which has been described as an “unlikely art juggernaut,” is a multi-million dollar company that launched in Santa Fe in 2008. Over the last few years, it opened additional locations in Las Vegas, Denver, and now Grapevine, which is part of the Dallas-Fort Worth Metropolitan area. The Grapevine installation is the company’s first venture in Texas, with a second one planned for Houston in 2024.

A mall might seem a strange place for a permanent exhibition like this. Grapevine Mills, opened in the late 1990s, was where my family went to kill an hour or two after driving to DFW Airport, only to find that a relative’s flight had been delayed. While other local malls like Collin Creek or Valley View have shuttered, now Grapevine Mills is expected to see thousands more visitors every year thanks to Meow Wolf.

Four years in the making, the Grapevine exhibit features installations from four dozen local artists. Visitors will enter the exhibit through a recreation of a suburban house with all the paraphernalia scattered about: Think colorful plastic magnets on a fridge door, oak furniture, and china cabinets. There are clues scattered around that form a narrative thread: a missing person case, and portals that open into other dimensions. It’s a space that, according to staff members, can be fun for families with small children or groups of 20-something art aficionados alike. The price of admission, at $45, is a bit steeper than a traditional museum. But you’re not usually allowed to slide down hidden vents into secret rooms in a museum.

Local artists are behind majority of the installations at Meow Wolf. Oak Cliff-born painter and UT Arlington professor Carlos Donjuan, Austin-based game designer Temitope Olujobi, and Dallas muralist Wheron are among some of the artists featured in the space. But the exhibits themselves are sparse on written plaques and captions that might explain what you’re seeing in each room and who created it. A kiosk at the entrance provides some of that information.

While visitors are encouraged to spend hours exploring the space’s hidden portals and easter eggs, I felt overstimulated after about 45 minutes as we moved from sculptural masterpieces to boldly colored murals and flashing neon lights. It’s particularly jarring to exit the bright, geometrically patterned gift shop, and walk into the mall’s beige halls. Once I was greeted with the flat, endless expanse of gray concrete parking lots outside, I found myself feeling like I really had been transported into another dimension as my eyes adjusted to the muted colors of the real world.

In some ways malls have always been a vehicle for passing time during endless summer days, a portal into another dimension with endless possibilities to consume. It’s a lot more fun meandering through Meow Wolf’s exhibit than picking out sheets, towels, or small kitchen appliances with your parents at the old Bed Bath & Beyond.

Before we begin, a strobe light disclaimer. Those prone to seizures or acid flashbacks should not proceed. Those uncertain about uncertainty should venture on with caution. The world we are about to enter, Meow Wolf’s newest location in the Grapevine Mills Mall, is not for the bland of heart. Instead, it is a realm of nonstop maximalism, a dimension where no nook or cranny is overlooked and no silence is tolerated.

Meow Wolf, maker of hypnotic, enveloping exhibits, opened its doors in Santa Fe in 2008 with the first of its large-scale immersive art installations. In each of its three subsequent locations—Denver, Las Vegas, and now Grapevine—the company built a permanent maze of otherworldly art installations and world-building sets, each organized around a loose storyline. (A fifth location will launch in Houston next year.) For the latest iteration of the art empire’s otherworldly brand, Meow Wolf has chosen an exotic locale: a suburban Texas mall.

A shopping center may seem a staid place to host a stimulus bonanza in the present day, but Meow Wolf chose the location to appeal to the nostalgia of our hangout spot of yesteryear. And Grapevine Mills, hip to the declining fortunes of brick-and-mortar retailers, has created an experiential smorgasbord for visitors to enjoy. Meow Wolf Grapevine joins Peppa Pig World of Play, Fieldhouse USA, and a Rainforest Cafe in entertaining the masses.

The Grapevine exhibit, titled “The Real Unreal” and housed in a former Bed Bath & Beyond, features a mesmerizing labyrinth of seventy-plus interlocking rooms of bright art, imaginative sculptural creatures, and fantastical storylines and concepts crafted by a team of more than 150 full-time artists and an additional 40 or so North Texas–area muralists, painters, and sculptors. A café and gift shop round out the gallery experience, though the museum is pricier than most, with tickets starting at $45.

Guests enter unreality through a “sensory deprivation” hallway, a short stretch of blackened wall space and the only area in the exhibit painted one solid color. After that sober trip, the world-building sets quickly devolve into a surreal, Willy Wonka–esque explosion: color, light, sound, and texture mix and merge and blur to distort a visitor’s sense of perception and time and tap into their inherent imagination. (It’s no coincidence that Meow Wolf’s second location was in Las Vegas, the town that perfected the art of overstimulation.) Guests are told that a story lies within the exhibit and are encouraged to find their own clues within each artwork. The plot begins in a house, where photos, mail, and books hint at the inhabitants’ disappearance; the story and the exhibit proceed from there. And because the installation unfolds along a choose-your-own-adventure path—much like an escape room—no two visitors will have quite the same experience.

While the exhibit can feel like a hodgepodge, “The Real Unreal” represents the brand’s first attempt to weave together the storylines of its four disparate locations. Like the original Santa Fe exhibit, the Grapevine experience begins in a home, with a storyline centering on a boy who goes missing after he discovers an otherworldly creature. As in Santa Fe, the home’s washing machine and refrigerator become portals to other worlds with names such as Neon Kingdom and Glowquarium, remixes of spaces that originally appeared in “House of Eternal Return.” Easter eggs abound for Meow Wolf fans who have visited both locations. Such a Marvel-esque commodification of artwork, while at times thrilling, has the sheen of a money ploy, especially in the hands of a multimillion-dollar company that’s now fifteen years out from its DIY roots. And indeed, other immersive art installations, like the nationwide Van Gogh exhibit, or the Instagram-friendly Museum of Ice Cream, have been criticized for their commercial varnish.

But in the hands of Meow Wolf’s multitude of creators, who seem to delight in the artful inclusion of clues and references, the creation of a multiverse feels like an earnest extension of the brand’s storytelling-as-art ethos, as well as a play on its recurring themes of perception and reality. The company says it will soon venture out into virtual reality games, apps, and graphic novels.

Despite the specter of brand strategy hanging over the place, there’s an overwhelming amount of novelty to scavenge. Somehow, despite the scale of the space—in which my tour guide repeatedly got lost—the most minute details are gleefully executed. In the Midwestern-style home, where the main storyline begins, a TV is loaded with countless shows and music relevant to the fictional characters; a random jazz album included therein is one recorded, in part, by local artists. In a constructed alleyway, a graffitied image of four numbers in sign language belies the code to a nearby ATM, which is itself connected to a light-up piano elsewhere in the exhibit. An arcade features original and inventive games designed by indie developers from Texas, as well as an anthropomorphized vending machine that has beef with the aforementioned ATM.

Throughout the exhibit, you’ll also find a lush two-story jungle with music-making mushrooms; an outsized refrigerator interior; a Cold War–era bunker; a people-sized, pillow-filled petri dish; an underwater transborder desert; an electric gingerbread fiefdom; and more. It’s an onslaught of all-out eyeball candy. Of course, it’s all eminently Instagrammable.

Some of the most compelling moments in the exhibits are the nooks carved out for local artists. Dallas artist Dan Lam’s Macrodose, a giant gob of rainbow goop, slops over an entire wall as her original soundtrack, set at the allegedly healing frequency of 528 hertz, goads the mind into gentle reflection. Dallas’s Ricardo Paniagua’s Alter Space, a cathedral of geometric shapes and simple light patterns, mesmerizes and awes. And Lance McGoldrick’s Crystal Cloud Cave—a room filled with an expansive sunset scene and piles of rock-like cubed mirrors—feels like the calm, thoughtless epicenter of smooth brain. North Texas artists, including Lam and Paniagua, began conceiving of their pieces two years ago, after Meow Wolf liaisons found their work on Instagram or through the Dallas art scene.

A critical mind might compare Grapevine Mills Mall’s newest resident to its other amusements. And while yes, Meow Wolf Grapevine does feature at least one simulated thunderstorm like its neighbor the Rainforest Cafe, its maximalist neon beating heart feels pure. Here, at least, art is a portal to another dimension.