Delaporte ManorDelaporte ManorHauntHaunted houseBackground: I LOVE Escape My Room. I've played 3/4 of their games at their previous location fairly early on in my escape room career and still to this day I hold them in high regard. When I tell people about the potential of escape rooms, I will often tell them about Escape My Room and, in particular, their lobby experience which remains a high bar. I have not played any of their games since they relocated. When I saw they were producing a limited edition engagement that was billed as "60% haunted house, 30% immersive theater, and 10% escape room" I could not have been more excited and eager to discover what they created. I have such faith in the creator(s) at EMR that I was willing to take a huge detour in my travels, largely because I wanted to experience Delaporte Manor. Perhaps my expectations were too lofty, but this experience did not live up to the standards that EMR themselves have set. To start, I think they have advertised this event all wrong. I would say it is 75% escape room, 20% immersive theatre and 5% haunt. To truly talk about it, I must spoil the overall form of the event. As this is a limited run, I'm hoping that they can return next year with a much stronger offering and these spoilers won't detract too much. The experience takes place throughout the entire EMR facility, which is immaculately decorated to look like an old southern manor. Over the course of about 35-40 minutes you will move from room to room and typically complete one task or puzzle in each room. During your travels you will encounter about ~8 actors who are all in character as humans that have been turned into dolls. You, too, will suffer the same fate if you cannot complete the challenge ahead. At the start of the experience you are given a notecard sized piece of cardstock. On one side is a decoder ring, containing the entire alphabet and a corresponding symbol/rune for each letter. You have been told that you will find one symbol in each room and to find it, translate it with the decoder ring, and then write it down on the back of the card, which has a Fill-In-The-Blank section with a space to write the symbol/letter from each room. You are not told how you will use the final word/phrase but it seems to be important. In some rooms you just need to find where the symbol has been hidden, in others you have to complete a puzzle to unlock something containing the symbol. Although you have been tasked with uncovering the mystery of a missing girl, finding these symbols is your main focus. Spoiler alert: this card is entirely inconsequential to the game. Despite spending most of our time concerned with this card, upon reaching the finale of the game you step into a lobby with a not-in-character employee who gives a medium energy "you didn't get turned into dolls" and then stamps your hand with a fancy red "D" (for Delaporte) saying it is your reward for completing the challenge. Then you'll take a pic in a human-sized doll box and be on your merry way. We asked what the point of the card/finding the symbols was and were told it is just a way to offer a throughline for the experience. Extremely odd choice on the part of EMR. This event was sold as a haunt with some immersive theatre and just a light amount of puzzling. The description evoked a spooky/scary experience with actors that would occasionally require some light task/puzzle to move the plot forward. We both left feeling that we had done an escape room with some actors in it. The "60% haunt" part of it? Nearly non-existent. Although the storyline and consequences of being turned into a doll are conceptually scary, at no point did we feel any fear, tension, dread, or even light spookyness. Disney's Haunted Mansion feels like more of a haunt than this. The only exception is a few minutes spent inside the dark room of their "Smuggler's Den" room (a traditional escape room game that is spent the majority in complete darkness). The scenic value is excellent, as per usual with EMR. But that is owed to the fact that you are mostly spending time in escape rooms that already exist, so of course they look good. The biggest downside to using these preexisting rooms is that they are chock full of puzzles and paraphernalia that have no bearing on the story and cannot be solved. You are essentially surrounded by red herrings and ghost puzzles at all times. I applaud EMR for taking a big swing and trying to get creative during the spooky season, but this is a rare miss from the company and I hope they can take the concept and create a more satisfying, and accurately described, experience for the future.
