Tuesday 5 July 2016

Mission Sydney's third room opens - The Lost Mine




Hi everyone

I have recently learned that Mission Sydney have just opened up their third room (thanks Joel).

I really enjoyed their first two rooms, Vampire Castle and Dr M.  Mission Sydney are known for their high tech rooms and I would bet any money that this third room will be no different.

Here's the summary from the website of The Lost Mine:

While shopping at a Sunday market, you come across a widow trying to sell her husband’s belongings. Out of curiosity, you start up a conversation with her.

Her husband had grown up an orphan and faced many difficulties throughout his life.
Without any experience, he was offered a highly paid job as a worker in a remote mine. Shocked but overjoyed, he threw himself into his work.

One day he returned from the mine with a purple crystal and quit his job. He became taciturn and reserved, refusing to say why he quit. Years later, he fell ill and passed away, leaving a diary and a voice recorder among his belongings. His wife decided to sell them along with the crystal to make some money.

Seeing the crystal’s value, you purchase all the items and conduct research. You discover that this kind of crystal is extremely rare and are sold for a very high price. These crystals were mined by an ancient underground civilization. The people and its ruler have vanished from record and no crystals have been found ever since.

Driven by your curiosity, you travel to the mine he worked, hoping to find more crystals and uncover the mystery of The Lost Mine.

This room is a 90 minute room, which officially makes it the longest escape room experience in Sydney (or Australia as far as I am aware).  The next longest escape room experience is their Dr M room (80 mins).  

According to their website, The Lost Mine is also their hardest room, with just a 15% success rate.  You also need at least 3 adults in your team for this room (and a maximum of 7 players).  
 
Normally we would wait about a month (so they can iron out any kinks) before checking out this room.  However, their website says that they don't allow children, pregnant women or certain disabled people (presumably due to challenges in the room design or scary elements?).  
My wife is almost 6 months pregnant, so it looks like we won't be checking out this room until after October.  I'd be grateful for any spoiler-free comments from anyone who goes there between now and then though!

The only negative I'll say though about The Lost Mine is the price!  The room is $240 for 4 people, which equates to $60 per head.  Despite the fact that their rooms are of a very high quality, I'm not sure too many people would be willing to part with that much money when there are so many other great escape rooms in Sydney that are around $35 per head. 

I get that this room is (up to) 90 minutes long, but $240 is too much in my humble opinion.   I think $50 per head is probably the absolute limit, and even then I'm going in with VERY high expectations at that price.  At $60, I'm not sure they could meet my even higher expectations.  

Time will tell though...

Thanks
Scott

13 comments:

  1. Congratulations on the impending new addition to your family Scott!

    I really liked Mission's other rooms so will be looking forward to this. Trying to decide whether to wait until your group has played it as we like to use your reviews as a base/benchmark :)

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    1. Thanks K! Exciting times here. I am sure that Mission Sydney's latest room will be awesome - it's a pretty good bet I think!

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  2. Congrats indeed!
    I'm looking to do this room in a few weeks but with 6 people to bring the cost down to $52. I wouldn't normally do an ER with so many people but these guys managed to pull it off with Dr M quite superbly (one of my fav rooms & did it with 7!).
    Can't wait to try this one... :)

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    1. Thanks! As you know, I normally try to steer people away from group sizes greater than 4 people, but if this room is anything like the scale of Dr M, then 6 people should easily fit within the room. I'm not sure though that 6 people would all be engaged the whole time though (I recalled in Dr M, which was quite linear, that there were a couple of puzzles which required only one person to solve and the other 3 of us just watched). Let me know what you think once you've been there Andy! Thanks.

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  3. Hey Scott,

    I was browsing the Internet for escape rooms and stumbled upon one called clock locked in ultimo clocklocked.com.au and thought that you may want to check it out. They charge per room rather than per player and it ranges from $130-150 depending on the room. Their Facebook reviews seem good so far.

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    1. Hi Natasha

      Thanks. I've tried 2 rooms at Clock Locked - you can read my reviews below:

      http://escaperoomsydney.blogspot.com.au/2014/12/review-of-clock-locked-da-vinci-theme.html

      http://escaperoomsydney.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/review-of-clocklocked-sydney-dexter.html


      I think ClockLocked is better than average, but not in the same league as the best escape room outfits in Sydney.

      Thanks
      Scott

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  4. I've done 6 Escape Rooms in Sydney and having experienced Lost Mine yesterday with Mission Escape, I can safely conclude that it's the best Escape Room I've played so far.

    They've clearly invested a lot of time and money into it to make it quite different from all the other escape rooms.

    I can appreciate people baulking at the high price, but IMHO it's worth it. It's all very subjective of course, but IMHO I'd rather pay $50+ for a great room rather than $35 for a mediocre room.

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    1. Hi

      Thanks for reporting back on your experience in the Lost Mine room. I'm really glad to hear that you enjoyed it. They are a very good outfit, so I'm not surprised to hear that you really liked their room. I know someone else who is going to check it out shortly so I'll report back shortly with their thoughts too.

      On the pricing front, I'm totally with you - I personally don't really care how much it costs if it is a fantastic room (but after having tried 42 rooms, I think I am an extreme case). However, I suspect many others out there won't be willing to part with that much money (particularly first timers, corporate groups, etc when their pricing is up to twice as much as the competition).

      For my team of 4, their pricing is $60 per head which really is, objectively, a lot of money. Whilst I agree with you that there are many rooms in Sydney that are mediocre at around the $35 price point, I think it is also true to say that the best rooms I have tried in Sydney (and interstate) are also at around the $35 price point.

      So unless the Lost Mine room is literally twice as "good" as the best rooms in Sydney (like Paniq Room's Supercell or the Enigma Rooms), then they are very expensive.

      From a business point of view, I think they run the risk of really limiting their market by having such an expensive room, irrespective of how awesome their room might well be.

      Thanks
      Scott

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    2. Leaving aside the concept of "twice as good" which is subjective - Paniq rooms are 60 minutes rooms. Lost Mine is a 90 minute room - 50% longer. Paniq rooms cost $35 ... 50% higher is $52.50 - which is the price for Lost Mine. Seems to be priced on par.

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    3. I would give it a miss. A total waste of money.

      I've tried around maybe 30+ rooms and this is the most expensive yet disappointing one. Reasons:

      1. Ridiculous story with plot holes
      2. Once you crack the first room, there is only one giant 'techy' puzzle per room to solve. I went with three of my friends and me and my other friend just got really bored.
      3. The solution provided in the third room is just bizarre. We couldnt solve it so we needed a hand, and once they explained it to us, there was no moment of clarity. It was "but why?!?!"

      It's too flashy. I get that they probably received a lot of feedback after Dr M and people like the techy and flashy part. You need to mix the tech and the puzzle breaking part to have an exciting escape room.

      This one is unfortunately not it.

      I wouldn't complain as much if it was reasonably price. But for that price, I was expecting the game to blow my mind. So disappointed!!!

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    4. Thanks for your feedback. I have now had mixed reviews from this room (some really love it and others, like you were not "wowed").

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  5. I don't think I can confidently say it's twice as good as the other rooms. Rather, I would say the value comes from the room being so different from the other rooms in the current Sydney market. Perhaps its introduction can inspire other places to produce similar high quality rooms, and competition will surely bring the prices down.

    Given the difficulty of the room (and the price), it's clearly aimed at the more experienced end of the market so it wouldn't be attractive to first timers or corporate groups. It was mentioned to us that the success rate was 15% and for my group it was the 1st time in our 12 rooms that we didn't complete the game in time. They kindly gave us 5 extra minutes to finish it because we were so close to the ending.

    I suppose I need to give a balanced point of view because I'm sounding like a crazy fanboy, so here are some negatives:
    - The person running the game wasn't very helpful with the clues. I realise they don't want to give the answer away but her 'clue' didn't provide any insight or hint into whether we were close or not. It was basically 'try harder'.
    - In the run-through after the game, she became quite haughty when trying to explain the whole game and we couldn't follow her explanation.

    Finally, they also said they had another room in the works coming out next month that they rated as even more difficult than Lost Mine! I can't wait for that one.

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  6. I've just finished this room and it was awesome. Mind blowing how much work they must've put towards all the mechanisms in this room. We played as a team of 7 (would've preferred 5-6). Everyone was amazed by all the clever gadgets and reveals.
    Unfortunately we didn't escape in time. One of the puzzles (a game of skill) took us way too long to complete.
    Customer service was excellent for us. Clues weren't direct but enough to let us know we were on the right track. Because we ran out of time, the game master ran us through the rest of the game, which was greatly appreciated.
    It's definitely a hard one. Not sure if it was because we played with a few newbies but everyone had fun which was our most important gauge.

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