Escape Hilo - Jungle Mystery Review (Hawaii)

Hi all

While on our Hawaii holiday in July 2023, we also checked out the Big Island of Hawaii for a week.  We found ourselves at Hilo on the 4^th of July and managed to get a last minute booking to check out Escape Hilo’s room called Jungle Mystery.  I had done some research ahead of our trip and had read a little about Escape Hilo, but I never received a response to my Facebook message so I had assumed that they might not have survived the pandemic. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw their sign and after calling the owner, we made our booking.

We were our team of usual 4 adults, together with our 2 daughters. Jungle Mystery was our 227^th escape room to date.  The summary of the room from their website is as follows:

Recover a lost family heirloom before your time expires. You have 60 minutes to solve your way out!

Before we played the room, we chatted with Ryan, the owner of Escape Hilo for a while. He explained that we could either play with hints, or without hints, the latter making us eligible for the leader board. After some discussions amongst the team, we decided to play without hints (which meant that no matter how stuck we might become, no hints were coming our way).

Here is what I thought of Jungle Mystery:

·        I would describe the theming as being pretty ‘gen 1’ quality – think astroturf and simple painted walls, which were fine but not at quite the same level that we see at most escape rooms these days;

·        the props were all good quality and made sense for the storyline;

·        there were a number of puzzles that our daughters were able to join in on, which was really nice.  Speaking of puzzles, they were quite varied and some were pretty challenging.  There was also some hunt and seek fun, which the girls in particular enjoyed;

·        there was a nice amount of tech used in Jungle Mystery – it was all well concealed and assisted with lifting the level of immersion; and

·        the experience was definitely family friendly – there were no dark elements or jump scares of any kind.

Our team really enjoyed Jungle Mystery.  We were all kept busy during our escape and adults and kids alike had plenty to do to escape.  I am glad to report that we made the right call in playing the ‘no hints’ version, as we didn’t need any.  We also found out we escaped in the second best time of any team that had ever played Jungle Mystery (by only a few seconds).  Ryan also told us that the team ahead of us had to play the room twice to get that time…

Where:                       Escape Hilo (Big Island, Hawaii)

Duration:                    60 minutes

Themes:                      1

Cost:                           $35USD per person

Overall Rating:           A fun, family-friendly adventure

More details:              https://escapehilo.com/