Unbiased review: 7.8/10
Completely Biased Review: 9.2/10
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Unbiased Review:
It’s a solid horror experience in a limited space. Puzzles are fine, set design isn’t anything mind blowing, nothing you wouldn’t find in your average horror escape room.
Worth playing if you are in the area.
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Completely Biased Review:
Why two separate reviews, you ask? Allow me to explain.
Whitechapel was the final experience of 4 escape rooms booked back to back. At the end of our 3rd experience during our post-gamemaster-debrief-ask-lots-of-questions-see-parts-of-the-room-and-how-they-designed-things portion of the game, I checked my clock realizing we had completely lost track of time. Instead of having a grace period in between games, we now had 15 minutes before our next room started. Checking Google Maps, what was going to take us 30 minutes originally was now an hour because of Barcelona traffic. Jumping into the car, we sped off. During our high speed get away we called the Whitechapel game masters saying we were going to be substantially late.
Most rooms when hearing you are going to be 45 minutes late will cancel your booking. Whitechapel responded with, “Get here when you can and we will try to get you through as much of the experience as possible.”
Absolutely magnificent customer service.
The fact they were still willing to allow us to play whatever we could and still maintain their schedule was beyond generous.
Barcelona parking is a nightmare.
After 15 minutes we finally found parking. We are now a full hour late. Sprinting on foot, we arrive to the address anxiously knocking on the door. Suddenly the entrance swings open and we are scooped into complete darkness.
What proceeded was 45 minutes of the most high octane gameplay I have ever experienced.
Understanding we were under immense time constraints, we started solving puzzles like our lives depended on it. Our brains firing on all cylinders like an Olympic athlete on 8 scoops of highly caffeinated pre-workout. Solving puzzles and riddles with such fervor and vigor, we entered pure flow state, absolute peak performance.
Seeing our frenzied manner, the game masters not only adapted to our gameplay, but upped the anti.
Holding nothing back, the physical contact became more intense, more frequent, the jump-scares coming from any and all directions. The faster we played, the more they threw at us.
The grand finale is among us, we run to the exit and as soon as the game ends, the lights come on and we are met with the actors all laughing with how insane of an experience we just had. I’m sitting on the ground, profusely sweating, my shoes are missing, and I can’t stop smiling.
We all exchange hugs and gratitudes as the game master and actors say they have never experienced anything like that. Just complete chaos in all aspects of the games. The poor actors were working 4 times harder than usual due to the panic induced momentum we brought.
45 minutes.
We somehow managed to play a 90 minute experience in 45 minutes. Not only did we get to experience the full game. We experienced the highest, adrenaline-packed, amped up version that anyone has experienced and still managed to keep Whitechapel on schedule.
So yes, I have to give this room two ratings because it wouldn’t be fair to the enthusiast reading through reviews and seeing such a high biased review.
But it wouldn’t be fair to Whitechapel giving them an unbiased review for such an insane experience and their immense grace for still allowing us to play.
Because at the end of the day, we are rating experiences. And this was one of my favorite experiences in Spain to date.
