Irvine School of Wizardry and the Goblin's SecretsHidden DonkeyEscape roomIRLAmazing experience, the room architecture was super immersive! They have some high tech elements that take their other room to the next level. Such a great room, highly recommend! With 4 people we finished the full room plus the bonus puzzles in 55min, so it was perfect! This room definitely feels like it has more puzzles than their other room! Our game master was super awesome and fun too! Overall it feels like this room was made by Disney, everyone needs to try it out!
Ink & AshesExodus Escape RoomEscape roomIRLInk & Ashes was an incredible escape room experience! The gameplay, storyline, and architecture were all phenomenal. You can tell how much thought went into every detail, from the room designs to the way the puzzles were incorporated into the story. There were so many puzzles to solve, and they all tied into the narrative so naturally that it never felt like we were just solving random puzzles. I highly recommend using a divide and conquer strategy since there are multiple puzzles that can be worked on simultaneously. Our team ended up finishing about 3 minutes past the time limit, but our amazing game master gave us an extra 5 minutes since we were so close, which made the experience even better! Speaking of the game master, Emmanuel was BY FAR the best game master I’ve ever had. He greeted us right at the door and took the time to ask how we preferred to receive hints before the game even started. I absolutely hate when game masters give unsolicited hints, so I really appreciated how respectful he was of our experience and how he let us solve things on our own. His customer service was exceptional from start to finish. And as if that wasn’t enough, when we finished the game and walked into the lobby, he had put up happy birthday banners for me! Such a thoughtful and genuinely nice gesture that made the experience extra special. Seriously, the game itself is fantastic, but Emmanuel’s hospitality took it to another level. I’ve done plenty of escape rooms, and it’s rare to find a place that gets both the game design and customer experience this right. I will absolutely be coming back and can’t recommend Ink & Ashes enough!
The Curse Of The Black KnightEscapeX Rooms - IrvineEscape roomIRLSuper immersive room. Great use of space. One puzzle stumped us because we were overthinking it, but overall a great experience! Highly recommend!
Ruins: Forbidden TreasureThe Escape Game - Westfield UTCEscape roomIRLLoved how immersive the room was! We had a group of 6 an got paired with another group of 2, so it was a little crowded for 8 people but the details of the room make it super immersive! Theres not that many puzzles so we flew through it with the number of people we have but I feel like a group of 4 would be solid for the difficulty of the room .
Cosmic CrisisThe Escape Game - Westfield UTCEscape roomIRLWent with a group of 6, super cool immersive room with lots of detail. A little bit on the easier side for us but still super cool!
Hotel Nocturnus - CLOSEDNightwalker Caverns Escape Room AdventuresEscape roomIRLI can see how this room might have been impressive when it first opened, but our experience was full of problems that made the gameplay frustrating and honestly not worth the money. By the halfway point, we just wanted to leave. Overall, the design was cool and immersive, but the poor maintenance ruined it. Instead of enjoying the atmosphere, we spent most of our time troubleshooting broken equipment or puzzles that lacked legibility. The flow of the game was smooth for the first 30%, but it went downhill during the last 70% with the following issues: **Several clues were unreadable or worn off. **A few puzzles we solved correctly multiple times didn’t trigger. Even the game master admitted we were doing it right but couldn’t explain why it wasn’t working. **The blacklight battery was nearly dead for half the game, slowing us down until it was swapped mid-room. Once replaced, we were able to see multiple sentences of a puzzle compared to one letter at a time, showing how much time we had wasted earlier. **Broken or poorly maintained puzzles, including combo locks that only opened if forced at a weird angle, or another puzzle that if you pushed too soft or pushed too hard wouldn’t trigger. **The room required using your phone/light to progress. At one point, we had to take pictures of clues because once things shut, we couldn’t access them again. **Puzzles that wouldn’t trigger unless pieces were lined up within millimeter accuracy. **Unlocks in other rooms happened with no sound or indicator, leaving us stuck until the game master intervened. **there was a misleading tedious puzzle that took a ton of time to decode, to find out it wasn’t even needed, which was pretty frustrating.
The NeighborSteal and EscapeEscape roomIRLThe tech in this room is pretty awesome! They did a great of utilizing all the rooms multiple times to make the layout feel big. The use of their AI adds a pretty cool aspect to the game too! Definitely recommend! There are some puzzles in the middle of the game that are non-linear, but I would say most of the room is linear. Overall highly recommend!
The Lost ExpeditionSteal and EscapeEscape roomIRLFun room! Definitely more on the challenging side since the puzzles require good communication for each assigned role. The tech isn’t super advanced but the puzzles are creative and require close attention to detail!
Black and White CafeMindFox EscapeEscape roomIRLGreat room, they did a great job fitting the theme! Puzzles were creative and fun! We did it with 4 people and we finished pretty quick, but the difficultly is perfect for people that are in the 1-10 escape room range. Mindfox has amazing rooms so I definitely recommend!
Oracle Mystery - CLOSEDThe Unlockables - PowayEscape roomIRLThis was a very immersive room (not scary at all, just a spooky vibe). The puzzles were creative and force the team to communicate which allows everyone to partake in solving puzzles. We’ve done about 20 escape rooms and we finished in 38min, so we found the difficulty to be on the easier side.. but overall it was a great room!
Exit Protocol - CLOSEDThe Unlockables - PowayEscape roomIRLVery fun room, tons of puzzles! My group of 4 have done about 20 rooms, and we were able to finish the bonus part of the room within 59 total minutes. At some point, the an amount of puzzles are very overwhelming, but if you slow down and work through one at a time as a team, then everything flows and comes together very well! I definitely recommend this room for groups with a little more experience! Overall great room!
40 ThievesMindTrap Escape Room - TemeculaEscape roomIRLBy far my favorite escape room! The set design is top notch, unreal the level of detail they put into this room. The intro show when you first get into the room is one of the coolest things iv seen, literally felt like we were at a Disneyland show/ride 😂. They did a great job breaking out so many different rooms into the space they had. The puzzles force you to work together and communicate as a team, rather than one person power housing through them all, which I liked. Overall, highly recommend doing this room. The tech is next level, you’ll be sitting there with your jaw dropping at certain levels.
Conspiracy Of Tia Canyons CorpMindTrap Escape Room - TemeculaEscape roomIRLOverall i really the puzzles and the immersive environment! I think this is also a great room for people that have done 1-10 range of escape rooms, please it’s not super difficult but it requires you to divide and conquer in small teams. It’s non-linear but it was not to difficult to solve the puzzles. We did it with a group of 4 people and finished with 16min left. Definitely recommend!
Moriarty's ManorMindFox EscapeEscape roomIRLThis room was in my top 5 rooms. We did this room with a team of 4 and got through the room with a few minutes to spare. We needed one hint which mainly confirmed that we were working on the right puzzle. The puzzles were really immersed with the theme of the room and it forces your team to communicate and do things together in order to get to the next step. There are times were we split up to divide and conquer different puzzles, which leads to more clues.. but the room design eventually forces you to come back together in order to get through a big puzzle. The designers did a really good job with the overall flow of the room. I highly recommend this to others!!
Deja Vu - CLOSEDEscape EraEscape roomIRLDid expert mode with a team of 4 people and we escaped but we were 28 seconds over the time limit! The puzzles were best and creative and really make you think. We’re not super experienced and we were able to do expert mode and I highly recommend it! The rooms have a lot of different puzzles, so it worked best for us to divide and conquer. Overall highly recommend this room to others!
Prohibition Ransom - CLOSEDBoss-Play Escape RoomsEscape roomIRLFun theme, multiple puzzles going on at the same time which provides a little challenge. Definitely a room for beginners that are trying out escape rooms for the first time.
Irvine School Of Wizardry And The Dragon WandHidden DonkeyEscape roomIRLThe tech is really amazing! The interactive props with the different pieces to the rooms really made you feel immersed in the environment. High recommend this room!!
The Magic CottageInfinity EscapeEscape roomIRLThis has to be one of my top favorite rooms. The set design was amazing! The interactive props makes the environment that much more immersive! There are a tons of puzzles, not super difficult, it just takes time to finish them all, which I really enjoyed. At the end it felt like we accomplished so many things! This is also one of the few rooms that has a clear interactive story that’s easy and clear to follow. This room isn’t scary at all. There are some amazing room features that occur when you finish certain puzzles and they are like Disneyland status good. We did the Irvine Wizards room right before this one, and this room was superior in my opinion, since the set designs were similar but the amount of puzzles made the experience that much better. This room needs to be at the top of people’s lists!
Dr. Hader’s Cartoon WorldScenario Escape RoomEscape roomIRLThe wall graffiti was amazing. The normal game puzzles were a medium difficulty, we finished that in 40 minutes. The bonus puzzles were super fun and were definitely a lot harder to figure out. The time just expired as we were entering the answer to last bonus puzzle. Overall, I would definitely recommend this room!
Ark Of The Covenant - CLOSEDCinema Escape Rooms - Los AlamitosEscape roomIRLIf you’re new to escape rooms, this is probably a good one to start with. If you have done over 5 rooms, then this probably won’t meet your expectations. The puzzles are pretty average difficultly and there’s not that many of them. We finished 25 min early with no hints and we’ve only played 10 escape rooms. I think my expectations for this room were just to high. I imagined this set feeling like the tomb when you’re waiting in the line at Indiana Jones at Disney. I feel like if they added a few more puzzles and improved the set design then this would really enhance the user experience (like the architecture of the walls to make it feel more immersive). Again, I still think this is a good room for people that are new to escape rooms.
