The Good:
I called around the various escape rooms in Tulsa looking for a place to go for my 8 year old son who requested a room for his birthday. It would be him, my 11 year old, wife, and I. The adults had some escape room experience, the kids none and I knew that 8 was pushing the lower limits so I wanted to find a place that was comfortable that an 8 year old would be able to participate meaningfully in a room.
Most places were helpful on the phone and tried to set realistic expectations. The SafeHouse seemed to do the same very friendly and informed, and the price of $25/person (they weren't even going to charge for the 8 year old - maybe that should have been a sign?) was fair and reasonable.
They ensured me that two of their rooms would be appropriate based upon my concerns and so we picked what was advertised on their site as this:
"Christmas Quarantine:
Santa has been quarantined due to covid. The elves have been working overtime to deliver presents. There have been some mishaps along the way. Hopefully you and your friends can sneak in and get things fixed."
The Bad:
First, we signed up for a slot on the afternoon of New Year's Eve. They didn't call me back until late the following day telling me that they were actually closed the day we booked, despite showing availability to book on their site. It wasn't a huge inconvenience, but the fact that their booking site doesn't work AND it took them until the end of the next working day to actually reach out for a booking the following day seemed a little lazy.
When we arrived at the facility after rebooking our appointment for the following weekend. We must have been the first session that day as when we walked in no one was there, not even at the front desk. We hung out in the waiting room for about 5-8 minutes until someone came and just prompted us toward a room. Not that it mattered to me, but they didn't even ask my name or check for our registration - I guess they were expecting us and had very few other bookings.
As we walked to the far end of the hallway it looked like they were doing construction on another room and it was possible another room was occupied (as we would somewhat be told later). We entered the room and was given a very quick explanation of the computer sitting on a desk that showed a timer (don't touch!) and the walkie talkie we were meant to use to ask for hints.
That's it. No introduction about how rooms work, if we'd done one before, no explanation of what the scenario was....nothing. Finally we were asked if we wanted a starting hint and I was a bit confused and asked "Well, like what is the story? What are we supposed to be doing here, etc?" The response was very generic one about simply "escaping" and so I kind of shrugged at my wife and then said we would take a starting hint because we had no idea where we should begin.
The room was sparsely populated, almost one entire wall was taken up by a X-mas photo-op we were told had absolutely not bearing on the game. The rest of the setup was very shoddily put together. Taped on clues that fell off when we opened chests, ornaments that were integral to clues fell off from their spots when trying to count them under the wreaths, making it difficult to track, and just generally repetitive, artificially hard puzzles made even more so by their presentation.
Every single thing was a lock, combination, letter, or key, and both my wife and I had issues with two different locks despite having the correct codes in.
It was clear that this room, despite having a "Christmas" theme had absolutely nothing to do with the description on their site about a "COVID Quarantine" and elves, etc. When I examined the email more closely it stated "Christmas Scavenger Hunt" which maybe was more apt (since that is such a generic term), but clearly wasn't what was advertised, nor what was discussed when I spoke to them on the phone.
Everything was made leagues worse when about 20-30 minutes into the hour all the overhead lights went off, leaving the room significantly dimmed and lit only by various lamps through the room. We used the talkie to let them know about this and were told they needed to kill the lights because another room required it, and that ours should still be suitably lit with the lamps!
I don't have the best vision anymore, and poor lighting makes it infinitely worse. I basically had to resign myself to no longer participating about 5 minutes after this happened. Had I known going into this room that level of lighting is what was going to be offered, I would have declined our session and looked for an alternative.
I'm not an escape expert. I have done 3 others (completed). I do however really enjoy escape type games on my phone, word play (crosswords, etc) and complete these regularly without resorting to hints in most cases. We didn't even finish half this room and that was with using all our clues. Yelp won't let me right anymore - but you get the idea! read more