Not too long ago when we were spending just about every day at possibly the most popular original…read moretheme park in the world, courtesy of our residential privilege, we never once thought, as we were standing in line after line after line for up to three hours, just for a 2-minute ride that somehow made it all worthwhile, that the theme park's design was really all based on the original founder's experience of the real thing during his own childhood in the contiguous United States, but of course it was, and so now that we can, we're grateful for the chance to experience that theme park's founder through his childhood eyes, visiting the magical places he created in miniature for us in his visionary theme park rides. So what happens when that theme park gets to be too expensive, or when we don't actually want to spend an entire day in an all-weather queue but still want to experience some magic? An escape room, of course!
We are not professional escape roomers - just an empty nesting duo who enjoys all of a theme park's magic in a compressed amount of time, on a reasonable budget. We found our August 2026 hour of fun in Las Vegas with Once Upon an Escape, and as the company name suggests, all their rooms are inspired by our childhood fairytales, starting with their incredible lobby, dimly but strategically lit and misted. The mist fragrance and incense fought a little as you enter from the desert heat, but the air-conditioning, as it is in Vegas, was most welcome.
Once Upon an Escape is family-owned, has been in business for seven years, and is located close to Chef Kenny's Vegan Dim Sum and Lunakin. There was lots of free parking when we arrived for our Friday afternoon game, right before we watched the new movie The Magic Faraway Tree at the Orleans. The two Whatever-Gender restrooms were nice, with pebbles in the sink - cute décor tip, as was the hallway going to the rooms.
For our first game with Once Upon an Escape, we decided on 7 Dwarfs, which turned out to be what we call a G2 room, where there were some technical aspects, as well as good old-fashioned brainwork and traditional keys. It was a little dark for us, but thematically, worked, because the dwarfs were coal miners after all. There was tons to do, and for a duo who woke up early, drove five hours through 107°F heat and then had a heavy but delicious lunch before doing the room, the riddles were a little more challenging than would have been otherwise, so thank goodness we had a terrific game host in Kira, who obviously loves her job and was eager to share her family's ingenuity with us. This ingenuity included a really cool introductory video via magic mirror and hints that were delivered to us via Rumpelstiltskin by text. The system locked up on us once or twice, but we managed to unlock it by simple hacking (it was just another challenge in our game!)
There was some crawling involved, and some of the puzzles were less in-theme than they could have been but we loved the room. Our favourite aspect was the cottage core décor, especially the last room, and our favourite puzzles were the ones with the apple basket and the use of magnets. We take this chance to apologise for inadvertently tearing up the props, thinking they were part of the game. Happily, they were easily put back together, but, yeah, that was time we could have used in solving the real puzzles!
7 Dwarfs was great value for money, with thoughtful props and FX. Some of the props were very well-used, and we would have liked a timer in the room, but Kira did a great job keeping us on track and was very forgiving in letting us have an additional 10 minutes past our time. Most importantly, we loved the victory photos she took on our phones - she actually used a ring light! We can't wait to return for the other adventures Once Upon an Escape offers - that's at least three more reasons to visit the Sin City!
