Apologies for the novel, but feel the need to post this review to warn others about the experience…read morethey may encounter...My family and I were in town for the holidays and on a rainy day thought an escape room would be a nice idea. After a bit of research, we noticed most top rooms in the area were completely booked (not the only ones with this idea on a rainy holiday afternoon). We eventually found Alchemy Escape Rooms and noticed that they had every time available. While this probably should have been a red flag, we went for it anyways.
After booking a 3:30pm reservation (for 6 people out of the 8 available spots), our PayPal was charged and we were told we'd receive a confirmation email. No email came. We continuously called the business but got no answer. We were especially concerned when we went back to the website and noticed someone could still book all spots for the 3:30pm reservation.
Nonetheless, we drove on over and arrived around 3:20pm. When we got to the door, it was locked. Upon knocking we heard a dog bark and a few second later, Joshua, the owner, opened the door. He was surprised to see us, and when we said we had reserved the room for 3:30pm, he said he didn't see it in his system. However, he was friendly and invited us in, mentioning he just needed a couple minutes to set the room back up.
We stood in the lobby for 25 minutes while Joshua was supposedly setting up the room. There were power tools on the front desk, and it did seem like he was building the room, more than setting it up. After the wait, he invited us in and we were excited to get going, despite the late start.
Despite the sloppy start, we were willing to look past the reservation system failures, delay in getting started, and overall "unfinish" look to the business. However, within minutes of starting the game, we noticed several major issues with the story the game was presenting.
I'll be vague out of respect for some of the puzzles, but to name a few issue:
-The door from the first room to the second room was left unlocked, throwing off the chain of events
-There was a prop oven at a bakery in one of the rooms that was supposed to open, but did not. The owner came in after the game had finished and confirmed it was jammed, again throwing off multiple steps in the game.
-There was a black "goo" that was on a lot of the books and props throughout the game, which grossly dripped off onto our hands. The owner explained this was resin from the props that were poorly made by the manufacturer.
-At one point, the Smart TVs which are essential to the flow of the game froze. This required the owner to interrupt the game, walk into the room, and fiddle with the remote for a minute as he attempted to fix it. He was not tall enough to reach the TV, and had to ask a member of our group to point the remote from a higher angle to properly refigure the screen. A minute after he left, an ad for a local Honda dealership popped up on the screen, further interrupting and ruining the flow of the game.
-At one point during the game, you are meant to recreate an image with props in the room. One prop did not fit in the space it was meant to, leading the owner to tell us to just lay it on its side.
-The final prop that was necessary to win the game was nowhere to be found. When the owner entered the room after our time had ran out, he had no real explanation for the whereabouts of this prop.
As we left the building, on our way back to the car, our entire group discussed how disappointing this was, and eventually landed on heading back in to ask for some sort of compensation for the experience. However, within 60 seconds of us leaving, the door was locked. When we knocked, there was no dog barking and no one answered.
We followed up with an email explaining how upsetting the experience was and asking if he'd consider some sort of compensation as we were clearly "guinea pigs" who paid full price for an experience that was not ready to be played. We did mentioned that if he was willing to offer some sort of compensation, we would be willing to forgo leaving reviews as the business clearly was not ready for paying customers. The owner replied to our email saying he was shocked we didn't enjoy the experience, and was confused why we didn't bring it up in person (which we attempted to but he had left). He then got very defensive and accused us of attempting to blackmail him for a refund, which he stated was immoral and potentially illegal.
After a few very aggressive email responses, we left it be. The owner did offer passes to come back again; however, as out-of-towners, that does nothing for us.
Very disappointing experience overall, and while maybe one day the business will be fully operational and ready for customers, today it most definitely was not.