Pirates of the Mediterranean: The Curse of the Crystal Cavern

Amazing room! The set was beautiful, lots of thought into the design! All of the tech worked for us too! The multi-layer approach to the puzzles was very clever, challenging but very satisfying to solve… I appreciate the creativity and strategy you can tell the owners put into this. Few good laughs, definite wow moments too! Go into this noting that details are everywhere which is pretty cool so vocalize where you find things to the team. It’s a top 5 game for us, so much FUN!

I had a pretty poor experience with the room. Yes the atmosphere inside the room is great and some of the puzzle were very unique and fun, but unfortunately a couple puzzles were mistakenly left already completed or the locks in opened. Plus my group somehow found a way to skip a step and it caused the trigger to activate the next part of the escape to fail. So we wasted a few minute before the GM realized and activated it for us. This ended up messing up later steps too and we had missing pieces for puzzles that we just ended up brute forcing. Overall this left us with lots of confusion between if we were doing something wrong or if the puzzles were broken throughout the whole run. My group doesn’t usually use hints but we had to speak with the master and ask a few questions to make sure everything was working ok. This ruined the immersion.

My favorite at Top Tier. A great cinematic intro got us into the spirit and multiple puzzle paths kept a group of four enthusiasts busy for quite a while! One multistage difficult puzzle was a definite stand out for me, and a cool reveal kept things fresh. Definitely with the drive 👍

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.