It's been about a couple years since I did my last escape room - the cost of doing an escape room has gone up considerably, so being able to go from one escape room month to month is no longer possible, in addition to my escape room group having kids, making it difficult to find a good time for all the members of my group.
So when my nephew was about to go to an escape room as his activity of choice for his 12th birthday with a couple of his good friends along with my sister in law and my younger nephew, I admittedly couldn't wait even if I mainly stood out of the way.
When we checked in they told us to wait until it was our time so they could get someone to collect us. I could see there was a hallway of black doors when the employees came out out into the "lobby" area (for lack of a better word).
The room we decided to do was "Gold Rush". They brought us to another door by the entrance/exit to the parking lot -- seemingly another part of the building altogether which was surprising (and cool). We had noticed that there was some signage as we were exiting the parking lot through the stairs for The Escape Game and thought it was interesting. Now we knew why! It similarly also had a series of black doors (on the right, as opposed to the left where their main location is at). She brought us into the room where we stowed our items away in a basket or hung at the back of the door, directed us to watch the video screen where we were introduced to a "gold miner" telling us the rules and our objectives.
It begins in a darkish "woodish" area, and everyone sprung into action once the video was over. My sister in law and I slowly walked around the room making observations, but letting the kids do the majority of the work. Only when they got stuck did we try and ask some questions or lead them to some of the answers. I'm not going to give any spoilers because that's no fun, but I will say towards the end it was a mad dash and everyone was trying to solve all the clues because we were down to 10 minutes and felt like we still had a ways to go. The kids really were able to solve most of it by themselves as they are incredibly smart kids, who love solving puzzles and are insightful in many ways that adults are not.
There is a mechanism to ask for a hint by pressing a button on the wall (if I recall, it's been a couple months!), and they will give us a hint or make comments by using the video monitor in the room(s). There was one task neither my sister in law and I could physically accomplish even though we had figured out how to retrieve the code, and they were gracious enough to just give us the code.
All in all, we ESCAPED! The kids were thrilled, the adults were thrilled. There is a location in downtown San Diego where I'm from and it motivates me to want to try an escape room with The Escape Game at home. I loved how diverse the kinds of puzzles they were - from color, to counting, to observations, to some skill, to some math. It's a wide range of skills that are used to solving these puzzles, and some of puzzles themselves and how they revealed a code was pretty darn cool (and of course, no spoilers). It's been a few years though so maybe the escape room technology has improved that much, but some of the mechanisms are among the best at least with the other escape rooms I have really enjoyed.
"Gold Rush" is one of the easier rooms, but it was super fun in my opinion. So if you're just looking for a fun time this is a great room to do that's not too hard but also not too easy. Definitely recommend this location if you're looking for an escape room to do. Very stylized, puzzles are tops, sets are tops, go =)
One more important thing - there were 6 of us, the rooms are max 8 spots. The room is a shared experience (probably one reason I haven't done this as I much prefer private rooms, and this will end up making it very expensive). It is recommended to buy up all the spots if you don't want someone to book your time - I don't know if we booked the extra spots since I didn't make the reservation, but this is something one should keep in mind if you are looking to have a private room experience.
Parking is easy here as The Escape Game is located at the Dedham mall and free. It is very plentiful so no need to worry about the parking here! read more