The Grand Wilshire Hotel

Rating: 4/5 - Lovely aesthetic with enjoyable puzzles Pros: ➕Great looking, immersive set. Decorated floor to ceiling, it has some Disney vibes. ➕Lots of tech, video, lighting, and audio effects. ➕Multiple rooms to explore ➕Puzzles were mostly enjoyable to solve, it was a mix of buttons, RFID/sensors, keys, and padlocks. ➕GM was friendly and helpful when needed. Cons: ➖One puzzle required you do to something unintuitive you wouldn't normally do in any other escape room, though the GM warned us beforehand. ➖The audio for some of the puzzles were a bit annoying, particularly one that played on repeat. ➖Ending wasn't that satisfying. I'd recommend 3 players. There are no jump scares, there is a tiny bit of spookiness but I'd still rate it not scary. No crawling or climbing. My ranking of the rooms I played here starting with my favorite: 1. Grand Wilshire Hotel 2. Steampunk Express

I was surprised to find out that The Grand Wilshire Hotel has been around since at least 2019...”ancient” in escape room years. It was actually a Terpeca finalist in both 2019 and 2020. While I wouldn’t say that it’s a genre-breaking room at this point, it still has some pretty cool elements. The decor is fantastic, and the walls and ceiling have a genuinely decrepit look. I believe there are only one or two padlocks, with the rest of the puzzles being more modern and tech-driven. There’s even some projection mapping. A couple of the late-stage puzzles require info from the beginning of the experience, and I really enjoyed these callbacks. My favorite was a logic puzzle involving the various professions of the Hotel employees. Most of the other puzzles are pretty commonplace by 2026 standards. Unfortunately, the ending is anticlimactic and doesn’t resolve the narrative of the experience. It’s a huge missed opportunity given the design and atmosphere of the final room. Overall I think this escape room has some great bones, but could stand to be refreshed and updated with some more unusual puzzles and a more dramatic ending.

Visually pleasing room with a grand entrance. The puzzles were decent but nothing super remarkable. I kind of wish they used screens less in this room as it took away from the experience. Puzzles required you to go back to previous rooms which is always a plus and makes the room a bit more challenging. The only issue was that there was a clue for a puzzle in the final room that continued to repeat on the screen in the first room which was annoying to listen to a hundred times. The ending was anticlimactic, but didn’t take away that much from the experience as a whole. At least in this room the temperature was much more bearable. I don’t think I could have handled melting from the heat for a second straight hour. Compared to many of the other games we played in Toronto, I felt that this location was not as great, but the bar is quite high in Toronto. In any other city both of these games would probably stand out. I still had a good time and recommend playing at least this game, if not the others. My ranking of all the games I’ve played so far at this company: 1. Grand Wilshere Hotel 2. Steampunk Express

This was a very good room with decent size, quality theming, solid tech, and challenging puzzles. Unfortunately for us, we chose to play it when the air conditioning system was down (we were given the chance to cancel but we went ahead anyway), and despite the staff doing everything they could to alleviate the brutal heat and humidity, our ability to enjoy ourselves was severely compromised. Moreover, we encountered a few tech issues that required manual intervention. Without these problems I think this would have been an excellent experience, so I would still recommend it.

The introduction once the game starts is kinda long. Prefers to have less keys/combination locks.

9.5/10 Amazing room, super fun gameplay. We finished it in 37 mins so it was a bit on the easy side. Exceptional immersion, great story. It’s a must-do!!

8.5-9/10, great room, great immersion/set design. Tons of different and different types of puzzles with a great mixture between technology and traditional locks. Only small thing - a bit on the easy side, completed it quickly with only myself and my husband.

An entertaining room. It felt fairly straightforward but there were a few tricky puzzles which I didn't expect.

The room itself was gorgeous. Super immersive and fun. We did it with two people and it didn’t feel difficult at all, so I’d probably keep it to smaller groups so that you don’t just rush through it.