Came here after trying an escape room for the first time in Minnesota. We opted for The Cellar. I must say that I was a little dissapounted in the room as it felt like there was very little intuitive direction with clues or what to do next. There were very little clues to figure out in order to get out of the room. The whole point was to escape the room, but the attention to detail and searching for putting two and two together was poorly executed. When we figured out the room, we felt like... this was it...? There's got to be more than this... it was just too simple for what we had been used to in our first room at another venue. Maybe try another room at a different time, but I don't know that we will be back anytime soon with their being other escape rooms in the area. read more

I really had a blast here! I hosted a party in the "Party" room which I find out later is the hardest room to get out of! But we had a great group full of smart minds and we actually were like 5 seconds from getting out of the room, apparently our group was the closest ever! I bet they say that to all the groups:) Anyway it kinda exciting! You sign a waver, that no one has ever read most likely (but it is online if you want to pre read it) and then you are lead as a group to your room! You get instructions.. The first being NO CELL PHONES... but if you like ESCAPE CHAMBERS facebook page before you go in you earn 1 clue from the game Masters who are watching your every move though cameras and can speak to you through a tiny speaker.. (which is pretty quiet, so you need to act as a team and shhhhhush everyone so you can here! At first glance the rooms are simple and not to exciting, but if you solve a few riddles and puzzles the next thing you know things will appear on the wall from black light, walls with move, and things will maybe start making a bit more sense! I highly recommend doing this as group sometime, you can have up to 12 people and the more the merrier in a situation like this! This place also has a little shop of games to buy, and lazor tag, so it's fun for all ages! I want to go back and try again already! read more

Escape Chambers - times up but they give you clues on the bottom though out - Escape Games Near Me - Des Moines, Iowa

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Need an escape? For a short time you can get a puzzle room and try and escape with ONLY YOUR BRAIN! lol. Well ok yours and maybe a few other people. This is a great team building idea. Bring your co workers, or people you like, or people you hate and lock yourself in a room to work together and try and escape. You have a limited time to escape and if you don't. DUN DUN DUN!!! Anyway, there is lots of fun fames in the store that you can buy and they have laser tag if you just need to run around and laser shoot someone. read more

We had a great time even with strangers, it was fun to see others strength and weaknesses, some rooms are harder then others. Groups of all sizes would work. Nothing has to be physically demanding just brain power to solve problems learn the path to the next clue. Yea kinda like a human version of the game clue. Go try it at least once. read more

Escape Chambers - Escape Games Near Me - Des Moines, Iowa

We came here with a large group of six for a family event in Des Moinea that would not have us all outside sweating. We booked our appointment the day before, so there was not too many open time slots but we ended up selecting the Warlocked 1 scenario. First off, the booking itself was easy. We had no issues with the website. Pricing was comparable to other escape games at around $120 for the 6 of us (two minors, four adults). Parking when we arrived was a little tricky. The building itself is marked only on the door so we drove by one or twice not spotting it. They have no lot for parking, so you have to find a street spot. As for the place itself, staff was nice. The required safety video had us giggling with their quips throughout. The scenario itself was a bit cheesy, but we really enjoyed the full booking being only six people so it was only our family group. The scenario employed some puzzle solutions we hadn't encountered before that made it interesting and the staff clues ensured no massive frusteration. Some elements confused us a bit as the solution required finesse with finicky mechanisms or toed the line of what we thought was allowed in the 'medium to light force' rule. Overall, we found it well-maintained and pretty fun for an afternoon. read more

Our group was in the Party Room and had an okay time. We did it as a team event and once it was over we took a vote and only 3 of the 11 would do it again. I was part of the 8 that wouldn't come back (and I paid the entire bill). It is 97% all mental puzzles to figure out. It's not like "SURVIVOR" show fun puzzles, we where not clear almost the whole time (which doesn't add to the fun). Here are some ways they could improve. 1) Give some clear direction on how to get started. We feel at least 10 minutes were wasted on trying to understand how to start. 2) Make the process understandable. We had no idea many times what our next step was to be. 3) Make sure your black light flashlights are working. One was almost dead the whole time. 4) Tell us in the beginning our goal is to get a specific number of items (I won't say what you are collecting). 5) Make more puzzles to use your hands (like the metal ones). That was the only part I liked. 6) Make it a 12 step mission and let people know what step they are on. The long and short is that if people aren't having fun or feeling like they understand it, they aren't going to want to come back and do the other rooms. From my team of eleven you will probably never see any more business (which is unfortunate because we are a marketing and event company and when our clients ask for fun team building suggestions this won't be one). read more

This place is definitely tucked secretly from sight just off the hotspots of downtown Des Moines. It is located in an office plaza basically, parking is available on the streets or the private lots of office buildings. I did not locate a private lot of this business, I'm not sure if they have one, but at least the street parking is free. If you are wondering, yes, this is the same company and location that is CMP Tactical Laser Tag! I have not experienced the laser tag here, but I did come with a big party for Escape Chambers! For those who do not know what this is about, here's a very brief explanation. You and a group of people (person limit determined by the room you choose) are locked in a room for an hour and you must solve puzzles and find clues to find a way to escape the room. Before you freak out, you are not really "locked-in", there's a button you can press to leave whenever you want, but you don't "win" until you solve the puzzles on how to officially "escape". There are several different rooms which offer different scenarios and have a different person-limit. We had a big group for a friend's birthday so we went with the 12 person Party Room. I obviously won't discuss what happened in the room since you need to experience that yourself, but I can say it was pretty fun. One thing I will say is, there is a lot of using your brain to solve puzzles. I actually thought there was going to be more of using your hands to solve things, but it was still fun with a lot of people. Be sure to check this place out if you have not! read more

Fun but very overpriced due to the quality! Poor upkeep! I rented two rooms for my family for Christmas and it wasn't worth $30 a person. In the room things were already broken, falling apart, misplaced, fading, and un readable making it frustrating and janky. I wouldn't be willing to pay that again--not worth it. read more

Nightmare... everyone but the manager was super nice and cool. The staff came in and helped because parts of our room were broken and did not work. It took about 5-7 minutes to get a clue and have the staff come in and fix the broken parts of the room. However, the manager got super aggressive when we told him about the broken room and tried to fight members of my party. Crazy read more

This was my second time at Escape Chambers. The first time it was with co-workers, so we didn't do one of the "scarier" themed ones. So this time we decided to do the "Cellar". There were 10 people in our group, which meant that we wouldn't be paired up with random people. I won't say much about this one since I'd rather have you experience it yourself :) The gamemaster takes you down to the room and gives out instructions. Then you either all go into the room together or you might be brought in one by one with a blindfold. Then you have 1 hour to escape. Basically you have to use everything in the room but you can't move things that have "do not move" signs on them and don't set off the fire alarm cause that will be a $500 fine! Most of the time you will spend trying to figure out puzzles and getting clues to open locks and eventually the door. Let's just say that I am 0 for 2 lol. It ended costing about $30 per person, which is a little pricey but in the end it was fun. I think it's really important that everyone doesn't take it seriously (as in complaining) and just enjoy the hour with your friends. We had someone that was truly afraid of the dark which made the experience even better seeing him act like a baby. I don't see myself going back anytime soon unless someone sets it up and it's for one that I haven't done yet. read more

We tackled the Honeymoon Suite last night as a church small group. It was pretty difficult, and maybe a little over crowded at times for our group of 8, but we sure had fun! Our lifeline was super helpful in not giving us tooo much help right away, but asking questions to see what we'd found on our own. read more

I generally like this place and the rooms are really good. Their customer service needs to be improved. Recently it's been less than satisfactory. That may be because of their expansion & needing more staff. read more

We visited as a girls afternoon out and the owner was wonderfully accommodating of our group. We had a great time in our escape room, it took us the full time to escape but we managed to get out with a minute to spare. This is a wonderful facility with a great staff and owner. We will be back! read more

My experience here was not a good one mediocre food and terrible service. Will not be returning to this place with my family at all.

Having done 50+ escape rooms and this Escape Chambers being the one that started it all, I am very disappointed in returning. The staff were very disinterested. We did the "Novocaine" room in which we were provided practically no backstory. We were told that we can only be heard in one area so we had to crawl through a maze to return to the area to ask for clues, upon returning we were left with no response for 10+ minutes which is a hefty amount of time when you have 60 minutes to complete the room. As for safety, we were not provided with any warnings before beginning the escape. Most of the room involved crawling through a pitch black maze in which head space changed constantly. Minimal padding on cross beams could have easily made this much safer. Upon completing the room we were then given a piece of cardboard and told to find all the locks and keys from the room and clean up. After crawling back through the room and retrieving all the locks we were just left in the room. We waited for about 10 minutes and decided to venture back out on our own. Once we finally reached the bar again, our game master was just chatting with the other employees. Another concern we had during the game was that they kept our credit card during our escape and only returned it when we asked for it before leaving. We have never encountered this in any escape room across the country. We were very impressed with Escape Chambers a few years ago however the service has really gone downhill. I am very happy that this was not our first escape room experience as it would have likely been our last as well. Get it together Escape Chambers. I am much more likely to go to competitors such as Breakout or The Escape and have a better experience. read more

Parking is horrible and they fail to warn you. Two cars in our party were towed. Won't be back. They knew immediately who towed us and were not apologetic. A sign would of been sufficient to warn customers. read more

We did the Composer room this passed Saturday night and overall our group had a fun time! This is the second time that I have been to this location and now that I've done two rooms I feel like I can give a review. I think recommending less people (our party had seven) would be a good idea. This room is smaller in space so there's just not enough for seven people to participate effectively. Also, there were couple activities/puzzles in this specific room that we had to do the same thing a couple times bc they "stick" or malfunction. read more

The boyfriend and I booked "The Cellar" for 12:30pm Saturday. First time being there we were grouped with a group of young college kids. The experience was ok but I recommend coming in with family or friends. Instead of working with a group that doesn't seem to listen very well. Other then that I would try the event again because it is fun as long I bring people I know instead of strangers. Around 3:30pm it was time for tactical laser tag. The best part of our day there was doing different types of objectives throughout the hour we were there playing laser tag. I would definitely recommend everyone to at least try this place once. read more

We did 'The Composer' for my friend's 30th birthday and had an absolute blast. The hostess was friendly, funny, and engaging and was helpful in guiding us when we were stuck without simply giving us the answer. She also was great about coaxing us to use a clue when she noticed we spent too much time on any certain task. Game started on time and the room was clean and in great shape; no signs of wear. Would absolutely return! We used a Groupon and it was a GREAT value for a group of 8! read more

Fun experience! We had a group of 8 do The Recruit. We were all first timers. Without giving anything away, it took us a few minutes to figure out what we were doing but we ended up working well as a team. If we had a few more minutes, I'm sure we would have made it out! This would be a good team building exercise too. Can't wait to try it again with a different scenario. read more

Went to both escape chambers and the laser tag...My recommendation is that leave out the escape chamber and just head straight into laser tag. I've been to 3 different laser tag locations in two different states and I have to say this is the best one. As for the escape chambers itself, we went to the cellar and sad to say but were paired up with 4 different other people that had no clue what to do. As this was a team based event, I highly recommend getting the max friends in one chamber so you wouldn't be stuck with strangers. read more

Good times! Make sure to go with a group of people bc u will get grouped with strangers. U never know how u may work with others. Its a great experience! read more

Our group of 11 did The Party Room on Saturday (St Patrick's Day) at 7pm. We were there about 20 minutes early and enjoyed the large waiting room with a TV to watch NCAA basketball while we waited for our turn. A staff member greeted us and took us to the "briefing room" right at 7 p.m. After watching a short introduction / safety video, we were taken to our escape room. The party room does not have a scare factor at all, and you are never restrained. This room can be done by groups up to 12 people. It's a very large room so it would be good for people afraid of becoming claustrophobic during the sixty-minute activity. There's always an emergency exit so you're never actually trapped in the room. This kind of takes the fun/suspense out of the game, but I suppose it's a required safety regulation. Even though are group didn't escape, I think we still all had fun. I have to give props to the staff for putting up with our loud, festive, partying group. They could have easily become annoyed with our repeated questions and jokes, but they handled it well and laughed along with us. This is a fun team building, family, friends, or company activity. If you haven't done one before, I'd recommend giving it a try! read more

This was definitely NOT the experience I was looking for. First, the staff member that greeted us at the door was rude and condescending (which put a damper on the rest of the experience). Next, my friends and I felt that the before hand information on our room (the cellar) was not very detailed and that the staff members showed little effort in embellishing the story to make it fun. I was also disappointed by the lack of difficulty of our room (we finished with over 20 minutes to spare and started with an hr). My friends and I have done an escape chamber before at the location in West Des Moines across from target. We absolutely LOVED it there. Our experiences there have all been positive with the staff and the rooms. I HIGHLY recommend that if you are looking for an escape chamber, that you travel to West Des Moines. read more

This is only my 2nd escape room, and my 1st experience was amazing so I figured they were all like that. I was terribly wrong! Here is why I gave them 2 stars 1) there wasn't much explanation to start, so we wasted 10 mins and then used our hint just to get going. 2) over half of the props in the room say do not touch or do not move, and they actually threatened the deduct time for moving the desk lamp because it was the only source of light in the dark room. 3) after that we were so worried about touching to wrong things we missed a really easy hidden key. 4) a key component in the progression is using the black light and the battery was on the verge of dying and then finally did stop working. 5) you can solve 2 mini puzzles to unlock 2 more hints, and we solved one and was yelling at the speaker to get our hint and the guy that is supposed to be watching wasn't there. This was also the same time we were trying to tell them the battery in black light was dead. 6) there are random thing like air conditioners and severs in the room that have nothing to do with anything and you have to work around. 7) everything was torn up from overuse which is somewhat understandable, but still worth noting I would try a different room at escape chambers in Des Moines again holding onto hope that this was just a bad night, but it will be under protest. read more

DO NOT go here!!!!! They advertise all kinds of cool game on there web site witch you don't get to play. The play area is tiny a 1/4 of what it used to be. There was three rooms (not including the safe zone) and a hallway. But you still pay the same price. Way too many people playing and the were running into each other. The instructor had no idea what was going on he wasn't even part of the laser tag. He was escape room employee and didn't know what to do. The guns were junk they weren't accurate at all and you would get shot through walls. I tried to contact the manager and never got a response. When we asked for a manager the employees got a big attitude and walked away from us. I will be contacting the better business burial for the fales advertising. They shouldn't be able to rip people off like that. read more

Literally stop reading and make a reservation. Best $30 I've ever spent! The staff are polite and knowledgable, and the selection of rooms is excellent. They'd love to have a wider array of rooms, but they need your help! Stop by and put your brain to the test, you probably don't have what it takes though... read more

I went with my extended family to this place, and we tried to enjoy their laser tag games. Wow, was that a mistake. They started late, were unprofessional, and some of the equipment didn't work. We spent $360 for three games of laser tag. And then afterwards, when we tried to complain, they had us call a call center outside of the state of Iowa. We ended up talking with someone in Houston, who admitted fault, but they still wouldn't even give us a partial refund. We tried calling one of the owners, but he never called us back. Really, really bad customer service. Be careful with them. read more

Definitely a great team building activity. However, our group was instructed to be there at 5:45 PM sharp for instructions, etc. before starting precisely at 6:00 PM. We were told if anyone was late we wouldn't be allowed to participate. That said, employees didn't show up until 6:10 PM. We were left waiting outside for over 30 minutes. More important, nobody was given an apology and it ultimately delayed our dinner reservations. I understand that not everything goes according to plan, but when no one apologizes, or gives any explanation as to why we were left waiting, I can't recommend. read more

My son has booked his birthday party there for at least the past 4 years....Since his 14th birthday. Last year was the worst experience he has had, due to the equipment not working and having to stop and change it. I asked the manager how EC was going to make up for the fact the birthday boy, my son, wasn't able to stay involved due to the equipment issues. The manager told me to email the district manager, and I did. I received an email giving me a code that would allow my son 50% off his next visit. So, this year I attempted to book his party, as usual, and the coupon code was expired. I contacted the district manager for a new code to book the party. She advised me that Des Moines does NOT book parties for less than 6 people. That there is no way to play laser tag unless booked by private party. No way to just walk in the day of and join the fun. Seek fun elsewhere, unless you are a large group, work group, and even then....don't count on the equipment working! Poorest customer service I have seen in many years! I am bummed, my son and his friends were looking forward to booking again this year. Heading to PERFECT GAMES in Ames! More than just laser tag there...gladly spend my money there! read more

This was such a blast! The staff was personable and even talked my friend into trying the virtual reality simulation before our room started. We did the Warlocked room, and it was so much fun. We didn't escape, but it was still a great experience! read more

Escape chambers is a great way to spend your night, it's fun and challenging and absolutely worth the price. Plus the employees there are great read more