The most unexpected thing about playing escape rooms in the Salt Lake City area is how many…read morebusinesses are mindful of the need for couple date-night experiences, and how cleverly they are able to tailor bigger rooms to suit smaller ones. Mystery Escape Room, with locations in Salt Lake City as well as Tucson, did just that with their European Café mystery game, Café Amour, which we picked because it was a 40-minute escape room designed for 2 people, and it was rated mildly challenging.
When we were booking our game, we saw on the web site that Mystery Escape Room does not offer refunds on cancelled bookings, but are more than happy to reschedule our visit, or place our tickets on will call to be used at any time and does not ever expire, which was good, because it was a bit of a drive for us to get to The Gateway shopping mall in downtown Salt Lake City. We need not have worried, however: getting to The Gateway was not a bad drive at all on a Saturday morning. The standard mall parking offered off street have their own app so it took us a while to get out of the car, but a short walk through the mall concourse, then up and down the escalator later and we found ourselves at the escape room - 30 full minutes before opening time at noon!
Happily, the door was unlocked, and we were able to seat ourselves in the lobby and look through the 3-D image books and Elf-on-a-Shelf photo album while waiting. There were also puzzles on the bookcase, which was held a surprise in itself. Our fantastic game host, Kiki, was able to fit us a whole half hour early, which was more than great, because it was already 98°F out at 11:30am, and there was scant shade in the outdoor mall.
The introductory video was self-produced and very amusing, and just gave Kiki the exact amount of time to get the room ready early and show us into the very dark second lobby. The game started even before we entered Lobby 2, and even that was only the preamble to our real experience, which finally started after we made our way through a themed doorway.
Café Amour is a perfect date-night (or day) G1 (very low-tech, with conventional locks and lots of brain work) game, which took us to the streets of old Europe, from the glass-stained windows to the wood-and-brick décor. The rules of the game were laid out clearly ahead of time, and Kiki was terrific keeping us on track - very important for a short-term room. Since this game is a more intimate game within at least two other rooms, we really appreciated the clear labels on what was not part of the game. Our favourite puzzle was the one we had to solve using playing cards, and although the word association puzzle was interesting, it was also confusing because it didn't seem in-theme. This probably had to do with the fact that Café Amour was part of a larger experience, and our exit also did not seem to fully complete the one (café mystery) experience. It was / is, however, a clever way to entice us to continue our escape room experience with them again. This was our only gripe, and why this is a four-star review rather than a 5. The short-term rooms at The Escape Date and A Great Escape (both previously reviewed) were more dedicated and focused. That said, we really enjoyed our time at Café Amour and the big perk was the freebie take-home at the end. There was a clock in the room that was not used but our time of 33:45 was meticulously tracked by Kiki, who actually did a five-star job.
We remain constantly surprised by how ingeniously all the different rooms in Utah are conceptualized and built, and we are really appreciative of how all our game hosts so far have taken the trouble to appear in costume and character. Our games have not been just "our" games, and it's so refreshing to see gamemasters enjoying our game along with us. We can't wait to try out the other rooms offered by Mystery Room - and soon!
This review has been posted on both Google and Yelp.
