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
