Sit down and settle in folks because it's time to hear the story of the worst escape room I've ever done (I've done quite a few). I have never felt compelled to write such a poor review for a room until this experience.
Let's start out by saying the staff was very friendly. Sadly, that is literally the only positive aspect of my experience.
We did the Flamethrower room here at enchanted. It is an understatement to say this room is not worth the $30 it costs. I probably wouldn't do their other room again even if it was offered to me for free. When we escaped, they offered us half off our next room, probably because that is the only incentive to ever get any returning customers because they definitely aren't coming for quality.
When we arrived, my group of 6 had high hopes as the old building gave off an "enchanted" vibe to it. This excitement quickly crumbled as we realized the entrance was impossible to find. I can honestly say the most challenging part of their entire business was finding the entrance, rather than any puzzle in the escape room. After circling the building completely, we discovered the door that led us to the third floor and onto the roof. You can imagine our confusion as we walked across a poorly lit makeshift boardwalk across lumpy roof ventilation to the lobby. Here they had us sign waivers which is standard for escape rooms, except they only gave us one tablet to pass around the six of us while our host disappeared into some backroom. Once we eventually finished signing them, she never returned until we rang a bell they had out, presumably because this is a common occurrence to abandon your group. I understand they may not want to make small talk, but when my waiver started acting up and not working, I had no one to assist me. When she took us to our room, we once again had to climb over the boardwalk to another room that looked like it was under construction and they just hung curtains to hide the mess. It didn't work. We saw.
I feel now is an appropriate time to discuss the theme of the room. The room is entitled "Flamethrower" and is described as being an anti terrorist task force building of sorts (I don't know either) that was currently being attacked by flamethrower-wielding terrorists. Two of our teammates were supposedly locked in a weapons room and we had to get them out. So many questions. Why are there puzzles in our own building? Why are they locked in a separate room? Why are the terrorists attacking us? Why do we not have access to our own task force building? There was no mention of any Flamethrowers in the room at all. Why name it flamethrower? Who thought of that?
Another major issue with the room was that it was completely falling apart. Every electronic lock or magnet they had in the room had exposed wiring and was falling apart. I personally feel like if you open an escape room, maybe you should invest in safety and not leave open wires everywhere. "Locked" boxes were hanging from the walls with signs literally begging us not to pull them off. Command strips or plain duct tape would have been a better option than whatever MacGyver solution they decided upon. The windows were covered by thin sheets of paper that was ripping off. The room looks like the owners decided to try to build it themselves with no experience in anything related to escape room building with a severe budget. The lighting was so dark they had to provide flashlights which barely even worked.
All of the puzzles they had were practically given to us by setting them throughout the room all at once. This meant there was no real start point and did not follow any sort of logical progression. There was no logic in these rooms whatsoever. Many times I found myself second guessing myself on what the answer could be because it was so unbelievably bizarre and illogical that I didn't think it would be correct, but alas, it was correct. Many of the puzzles they had relied on having us find small writing on things and connecting them to far fetched ideas elsewhere. We were also given pages upon pages of information all at once. Most of it we didn't even use. This was all typed out in the most generic font you can imagine and super small writing, making you waste a lot of time reading. They put several stepped instructions for a lock at the front of the room no where by the lock which was on the opposite side of the room.
The hint system was by far the worst you could imagine. I have no idea what the game masters have to do for an hour because all the hints are prewritten and placed in the room with you. They were extremely generic and only provided information we already had.
After we escaped, we got to pose with cheap props and laminated pieces of computer paper with Arial 12 point font and generic phrases.
I honestly question if the designers of this room have ever done an escape room before in their life before making their own. Please, do not waste your money on this escape room. read more