Pirates of the Mediterranean: The Curse of the Crystal Cavern

As with any of our ratings, we work on a 50 point total scale divided into 5 10-point categories. They are as follows. Location (ease of access, near other things) User Friendliness (difficulty, need for hint) Service (helpfulness, hint quality, enthusiasm) Aesthetics (decor, theme, variety) Bang for Buck (was it worth it?) We attempted to escape from the PIRATE themed room. Location: 7 While it is tucked away from the freeway, it is located on a main street and is easy to get to with plenty of parking in the lot. There are some restaurants in the area within half a mile. User Friendliness: 7 This room was fairly difficult at times and made you think outside the box a bit. We definitely got stuck on some parts where some clues were, let's say, in places we wouldn't have thought to look. With a group of 4, we still had 5-6 tasks to get through before time ran out. It's definitely doable, we just didn't get the clues how we think we should have. Service: 7 The lady working was very kind and explained all the rules ahead of time and was thorough. She was very monotone and straight forward, not really hyping up the event. When asked for hints she was very direct but didn't tell us exactly what to do. Aesthetics: 8 The decor, props, and construction of the room was very well done. Nothing seemed to be cheap and it was very well thought out of a plan. Definitely felt like we were "transported" to this situation. Only gripe was felt little small at times. They also have 3-4 other themes. Bang for Buck: 9 The price was reasonable. The theme/room was well done. If someone asked us to do another theme room here, we'd say absolutely. Overall Score: 37/50

Still fun, but… things can be better. Despite a fun and seemingly immersive setup, in the end the room is just a gen 1 escape with slightly better than average set decoration and narrative beats. Ultimately the frustration comes from a long series of disjointed, nonsensical puzzles that aren’t motivated and rely too heavily on overlapping symbols. It’s clear the creators have genuine talent and creativity, unfortunately it just did not end up in much of the final design of the room.

This is a very well-done escape room. It has a variety of traditional puzzles and locks with some interesting tech driven puzzles. I enjoyed it.

One of the more immersive sets I’ve seen! Set design was incredible. There are a LOT of visual clues that are easy to miss so this is definitely on the more challenging side, but lots of fun and unique puzzles.

Very immersive set with an impressive intro scene to the room! A mix between linear and non linear aspects. Relies HEAVILY on visual clues scattered around the ENTIRE room so BE OBSERVANT! Got very stumped on certain puzzles because most puzzles were layered in thought process and required 2-3 steps of observation to narrow the FINAL solution. Mechanical in nature using multiple locks and keys, but techy in some aspects. Definitely a unique pirate experience that has a fun objective to complete the game that helps you keep “progress” of how much more u have to do. Animatronics and scene effects were very responsive! Overall, a fun room that does the pirate theme very well—difficult in nature but accomplishable with the right observational skills!

One of my favorite rooms to have played. The amount of detail and work put into this room was amazing. Really well thought out room with a lot of fun puzzles and things to see. If you are looking for a high tech, hands on room, this is the room for you! I can’t wait to try other rooms when we visit again.

Fun set design and interactive elements, puzzles were overall creative, but too many items were given without complete information which cost a lot of play time when we thought the puzzle was solvable but didn’t find out until later by the GM that we didn’t have everything yet. Slightly frustrating.

Such a fun room, with a lot of interactive characters (that was a first for us!), effects, music, thematic lighting and sound effects. Truly felt like we were right there in a crystal cavern. There were a LOT of puzzles to solve, many of them were pretty challenging. We had a big group (8) so it got a little chaotic, but was super fun. It was our 2nd room of the day and we wanted to do another when we were done. Highly recommended!!

Top Tier continues to get better with each game! My group loved this game and it really got them addicted. Theme, puzzles and flow of the game is great. I especially loved the beginning of the game. Super fun!