Alice in Wonderland

The company is closed. Usually between my wife & myself, one of us remembers something/anything that stands out in a room we do together. But not here. A very unmemorable Alice in Wonderland room. 🤷🏾‍♂️

I have to give Riddle Me Out props on their props and decorations. I did the Alice In Wonderland room, and they did a great job decorating the room(s). And the mechanics of the escape were top-tier. They had a system of electromagnets that could be released by using the right combination of moves, some of them quite clever. It was very cool. Like a Michael Bay movie, though, they spent way too much energy on the effects and not enough on the substance. A good escape room is one that provides all the clues the captives need to escape. One clue leads to another, and with the clues you collect others, unlock other clues, and finally escape. However, the clues in this escape room were terrible or non-existent. After we didn't escape, when our time was up, we asked the employees to walk us through the escape. They did so. As we progressed, and they showed us what the clues were, I would ask how we were supposed to know to do that. Their answers were very dissatisfying and made me believe that no one could possibly exit the room without either a lot of dumb luck or help. And most of the clues we found were dumb luck--there is a black light in one room, and when the guide was showing it to us, the clue that was supposed to be revealed with the black light did not show at all, so it was lucky we stumbled upon it (literally). For example, one of the clues can be unlocked by completing an electric current through two knockers hung on two walls about 8 feet apart. All you have to do is touch the knocker with one hand, have a partner touch the other, and then you both hold hands. But how are you supposed to know that? According to the game master, the fact that there is a picture of Alice and the Rabbit running while holding hands should have told us that we needed to hold hands between two knockers. Uh huh. There were others as well. For example, we had to use a clue in a pair of books to unlock a room. Except even when we successfully did the combination, the room didn't open (so we naturally thought that we had done it wrong). We found out 20 minutes later when the game master (who is watching through cameras and communicates through a PA system) finally told us what to do, which is exactly what we had already done. Also, the game master had a very heavy accent, so when he would give us suggestions, we couldn't understand him. And we told him we didn't understand him, and this happened enough times without clarification that we concluded that either he didn't understand us or it was a one-way communication system so he couldn't hear us at all. All told, the one star is earned from the mechanics and decorations, but they don't get the other four because there was no way to solve the game with the clues provided.

This business is now closed.