I just got home from attempting Da Vinci's challenge in Middletown, and I can say without a doubt…read morethat it was the worst escape room experience I've ever had -- and I've tried more than 20 escape rooms across Connecticut and the Northeast. It was incredibly disappointing in every way.
First off, we were met by a staff member who told us that he was the only one working and that the group in front of us was running a few minutes late ... which is fine, and happens. He then took care of another group for the other room, but then the real chaos began as he tried to help them get started and help the other room finish. When he finally got that settled, he then told us he had to reset our room--which took him more than 30 minutes to do!
We waited while he kept running from one room to the other to the desk trying to figure everything out -- apparently he was not familiar with any of the operation, and very flustered by everything happening.
When our room was finally ready -- more than 45 minutes after our originally scheduled time -- he rushed through the instructions, which he seemed very confused by. But we finally got into the room ... and things got worse!
Not only was it generally too dark to see any of the puzzles or clues, but when we did start solving challenges, it wasn't clear at all what was going on or if anything was actually being solved. For example, we would seemingly solve a puzzle in one area, and a drawer or cabinet in the other space would pop open. Or at one point, we solved one thing, and three different drawers opened at once (including spots we had thought we already solved), and it all seemed very random and disconnected. No puzzle was sequential, nor seemingly led to the next clue or challenge.
At two points we asked for clues, only to be given responses that seemed more confused than we were by what was happening. The clues on the recording were also non-sequential and clearly on a loop that had no connection to our actual experience.
Again, making this all worse was that the rooms were often too dark to see much of anything -- for example, there was a clue about lining up the colors on a board, but the room had nearly no light, and if we didn't use our phones, we wouldn't have seen any colors whatsoever. We also were told there were candles around the room to help but these were out of power very shortly after the time started. The lights went on and off randomly throughout game play, which also seemed like a bit of a safety hazard in general.
We were given no warning about the end of the game, and there was no visible timer in the room to inform us how much time remained. Finally, the door opened and we were told "You did it ... well, most of it!" Which, did we escape or didn't we? We were told we got more than most, which didn't even make sense. We pointed to one puzzle in the room that we weren't sure if we had solved, and again, the employee had no idea what the solution was. He went to the desk and opened it from there, and the clue that came out made even less sense.
In short, the room and experience was a mess, the service was terrible, and it certainly was not worth the money we paid. Again, disappointing and confusing in every way -- and again, we've been to and beaten more than 20 escape rooms, so we know what a quality one is like. This was not even close!
I would discourage anyone from going to this experience and spending their money here.
