This is a really hard review to do, because, three weeks after our game, we are still very confused as to what happened. Since it would just be the two of us older players, and we took pains to make sure when we booked our room, that it was adaptable to our needs. The first glitch came about when we made our reservation on their web site and then wanted to change it. After two days of no response when we contacted them via e-mail, we left several voicemails for them to contact us, and never heard from them - at all.
Arriving in Frisco, we found Escape Room Frisco right on Main Street, Frisco, half a block from the Snowshoe Motel. Main Street Frisco parking is free, too, and plentiful when we were there. The building is locked on Sundays, and we could not see if it was even inhabited, save for the signage outside that said "Escape Rooms Frisco" that looked pretty new. Nevertheless, we were up for adventure!
Our reservation was for 3:30pm the next day, Monday, but we found ourselves in front of the building by 1pm. The main door was open, and we entered a lovely lobby amidst a lot of banging noises. When we finally found someone, it turned out he was our gamemaster doing some construction work, maybe a new room they were building (promising!) or just general construction. Either way, we were really excited that he was able to let us start early, and we made sure to let him know that we really wanted to see the whole room, so if he could give us really big hints, it would be great.
We chose to do "Finders Keepers", in keeping with Frisco's founding history, a 1908 treasure hunt where, as miners down on our luck, we try to steal Mr Foote's (a big person in Frisco - very interesting to see his family name everywhere) watch that some school children have found from the Denver Hotel heist and stashed in their schoolhouse before the lunch bell. The game had a difficulty rate of 3/5 and the record time was 29:40, so it would have / should have been easy to complete with gamemaster help. Except. Our gamemaster was duo-tasking, we slowly realized and not completely present. All through our game, he continued with his construction work, and it soon dawned on us that he allowed us to start early because he wanted to get back to it.
The puzzles required a lot of finger-work, but were in theme, and the room was very in keeping with the rest of the town of Frisco. This is a good game for between 2 - 8 players with some need to crawl: there was stomach-to-floor work unless you are a very small person, and some of the puzzles can be solved by younger kids - if the locks opened when we solved them. The décor was simple but effective (like the very utilitarian toilet inside the building), and there was no tech at all - just lots of locks, very many of them, which, even when we (without glasses) managed to solve the puzzles, were very glitchy, and our gamemaster had to come in our room three times to physically get to the answer - each time taking about ten minutes of hollering before we got his attention!
We are generally okay with the room winning if we felt like we got our money's worth. The cost of "Finders Keepers" is high compared to other games outside of California, Frisco being a tourist village, so we had similarly high expectations that we would at least be wowed by tech or something. It was an expensive room for the amount of attention we got, like we were paying to beta-test the room. From the positive reviews online, had our host been present for our game and less anxious to get back to his other work, we'd have been able to solve the room in the time allotted. That said, while the service was below expectations, they are obviously still trying to get themselves off the ground, so we would come back again to support their efforts. He did show us the ultimate treasure, and he was friendly all through the game - but he was not playing with us. At all. We would love to see at least one more escape room in Frisco so we can compare the service and attention of both. As it is, we did not see the level of professionalism we have come to expect, so we ... er ... -rate (!) - this experience accordingly. This review has been posted on Yelp and Google. read more