California Escape Rooms - Summary

Hi all

So, I'm now back from my trip to California.  My wife and our 2 daughters took a 3 week trip to California, where we travelled to Los Angeles, San Diego and Anaheim.

I was really lucky and managed to find a team of experienced escape room players that were kind enough to let me join them on 5 rooms across LA and Anaheim (which I did of an evening when my girls were in bed).

I also managed to get into The Basement (a famous LA escape room business) where I tried a couple of rooms with some strangers (who were not very experienced at all).  And lastly, my wife and I also took our girls to a total of 6 escape rooms across California.

I don’t propose to provide full reviews of all 13 rooms in detail, but in case any of you are planning on heading to California, I thought I might give a quick summary of each room.

So, here is the list (in the order that we did them), together with a summary of my thoughts:

Los Angeles

Hatch Escapes - Lab Rats

Maze Rooms LA – World of Illusions

Evil Genius – Chapter 1 Occam’s Apartment

Evil Genius  – Chapter 2 Norcross Art Gallery

The Basement – The Study

The Basement – The Courtyard

Evil Genius – Chapter 3 The Morgue

Stash House

Quest Room - Red Giant

Anaheim

Cross Roads – The Fun House

Mission Escape Games – The Ultimate Bank Heist

San Diego

Steal & Escape – Mysterious Stranger

The Puzzlarium - The Parlour

Hatch Escapes – Lab Rats

This was a fun room, where the tables are turned and we found ourselves being the humans in a cage with rat masterminds being our leaders.  This room reminded me a lot of the game Mouse Trap – we were kept very busy with a lot of puzzles and a lot of hunt and seek fun.  The theming was excellent, the puzzles were all varied and interesting.  This is a family-friendly room (our 2 and 6yo daughters came with us), but there are some dark areas and flashing lights to be aware of.  This was an excellent room with great theming and puzzles.  It was definitely one of the better rooms we did in California.  You can check out Lab Rats here.

Maze Rooms LA – World of Illusions

At the time that we did this room, it was the best room we had done to date with kids.  It was so cleverly themed, the puzzles were all interesting, multi-faceted, engaging and incredibly fun.  My 6yo in particular loved the magic theme.  So many aspects of the room relied on well-hidden tech, the result being many “magical” moments.  This is a fantastic room for kids and adults alike.  It definitely rates in my top 10 rooms to date.  You can check out World of Illusions here.

Evil Genius – Rooms 1, 2 and 3

These rooms were fun.  I did them with an experienced team and had a great time.  The first 2 rooms can be done back to back (with a really seamless connection between the 2).  Great puzzles, some fun “games to do” and some great theming.  I read recently that unfortunately, they are closing down Evil Genius soon, which is a real shame.  They were some of the best rooms I did in LA.  Their website is here.

The Basement – The Study and The Courtyard

I have wanted to check out The Basement’s rooms for years.  I saw a video online of celebrities playing a room at The Basement and I was hooked.  I managed to book in with a team of strangers but about an hour before the room, I got call telling me they had cancelled and I now had no team to play with.  Luckily another team was playing a little later that night so I joined them.  We played The Study first, which was really enjoyable.  There were scary elements and the live actor in the room really added to the immersion.  We had such a great time that we all then played The Courtyard.  The theming in that room was up there with The Marlowe Hotel (my favourite room to date, based in Sydney).  The puzzles were varied and interesting, the live actor element was great, but the immersion and theming were simply off the charts.  This was my favourite room in LA. 

There are 2 other rooms currently at The Basement, which I desperately wanted to check out (but I couldn’t find a team).  I’ll definitely be checking them out on my next trip to LA.  You can check out The Basement here.

Stash House – Stash House

I did this room with the experienced players in LA.  It is probably the latest time of day I have ever been to an escape room – we started at around midnight and kept going into the early hours of the morning.  It was a truly thematic room with so much detail, a heap of puzzles and some really clever aspects I won’t soon forget.  It’s not children appropriate at all and is best suited to more experienced players.  I really enjoyed this room.  You can check out more about Stash House here.

Quest Room - Red Giant

This was the last room we did in LA on our final day before flying home.  We did this room with our girls and with extended family, who were second time escape room players.  There is some nice tech in this space and some high production value props and theming.  I didn’t think the puzzles were as good as the majority of other rooms we played in LA, but we still had fun.  The room ending was also a cracker.  This room is kid friendly and best suited to newer players.  You can check out Quest Room here.

Cross Roads - Fun House

This is my new favourite children-friendly room that I have done to date.  The theme is a funhouse/circus.  The puzzles are varied and fun, the theming is incredibly strong, but the live actor element is the best I have encountered to date.  The game master is a famous magician who is in a painting on the wall.  The magician provides hints throughout the experience by listening to you and speaking back.  Our game master was fantastic – he made jokes with our girls, he listened to their jokes and there was also a side challenge to find 10 hidden coins within the room – the magician spent a lot of time helping our girls find the hidden coins (so they felt very much involved and felt like they were helping).  This was a truly fantastic room for families and children.  It is located about 20 minutes from Anaheim.  They also have what I hear is a fanastic multiplayer room (where each player is based in their own room and players need to work together to solve puzzles to escape), but because players only ever see the one room, players can come back and re-play the game in the other rooms.  You can check out Cross Roads here.

Mission Escape Games – The Ultimate Bank Heist

I played this room with the experienced LA-based team.  There were 7 of us in total.  There was a nice mix of low and high tech puzzles in this room.  It didn’t “wow” me, but it was a solid room.  We managed to break the record on this room, despite having taken an age to solve the final puzzle.  I think this room is probably better suited to newer players (and definitely not 7 experienced players).  I found that the majority of the puzzles were solved without me knowing much at all about the puzzles or solutions.  I did manage to add value on a couple of puzzles though, which was cool.  You can check out Mission Escape Games here.  They are within walking distance of Disneyland.

Steal & Escape – Mysterious Stranger

We played this room in San Diego with our girls.  It was an anti-terrorist room (but it wasn’t scary or too dark, so it was family-friendly.  The quality of the puzzles was pretty good.  I didn’t love the theming – it was solid but by no means impressive.  The overall game play was ok but there were no real “wow” moments.  We had fun though.  You can check out Steal & Escape here.

The Puzzlarium – The Parlour

Unfortunately, this was my least favourite room in the USA (and it would rank among the bottom 5 experiences I have had to date in escape rooms worldwide).   I liked the theme – you are in a parlour and you have to solve various puzzles to earn currency (and the way out of the room is to score enough currency to buy the final key).  Some of the puzzles were interesting, but where the room fell down (and it REALLY fell down) was with the live actor in the room.  There is an incredibly high level of interaction with this room, and accordingly the room lives or dies with the actor.  We had a really bad actor/game master.  I have come to learn that the biggest challenge of having a live actor in the space with players is that they can become a crutch – typically players might not ask for hints or clues in an escape room until they are stuck.  But this guy was very quick to “assist”, but at no point did he really provide any valuable assistance.  He annoyed me by the end of it and although he did try to engage with our girls to get them involved, it was an epic failure.  I didn’t enjoy this room and I suggest you give it a miss.  You can check out The Puzzlarium here.

So that’s about it for the summary of the rooms on our LA/Anaheim/San Diego trip.  I had selected the above rooms after doing hours and hours of research, so hopefully it might be a useful starting point if any of you are planning on checking out escape rooms over there.

If you have been to any of the above rooms, let me know what you thought in the comments.

Thanks

Scott