K
KaitiesKrew
111 escape rooms
The biggest issue with playing Holiday Heist for us was that we played it on a Saturday afternoon in June in Arkansas WITH NO AIR CONDITIONING!!! The popcorn place that was attached to this escape room is being turned into a restaurant and the electrician was still working out the shared power kinks. Had we known the AC was out on such a hot day, stuck in a room for an hour, we might have postponed our visit (Since we drove all the way from Maumelle to Cabot, we did take the time to play this second room...also without AC since we were already there -- glad I wore jeans that day). This was another very linear, but fun room. The puzzles were relatively straightforward, with a couple of gotchas. The heat was a roadblock in this room since certain items didn't work properly in the heat; hopefully this has been fixed and is no longer an issue. We moved through this game well (despite our final time) but there were a couple of puzzles where the GM came in to explain issues with certain puzzles (e.g. when counting all of the orange widgets, regardless of shade of orange, they all need to be counted despite varying shades -- when it becomes that minute that the GM comes in maybe the puzzle needs to be changed). See below for "broken" items in the room. Overall, we had fun (despite the heat) solving this room and really enjoyed the level of difficulty of the clues. It took our team of four working together to get through. Not a beginner room, but a lot of fun with a good theme. We'll be back to The Escape Spot when they get additional rooms (the outdoor adventure room we did there previously was very good).
Gameplay
A journey through the holidays with good puzzle interaction.
Atmosphere
The atmosphere was only so-so (did I mention the lack of AC?). Each holiday is well portrayed, and the room is decorated nicely, but in the end it is just a bunch of different areas in one room, moving back and forth to the same area (which was still well laid out).
Customer service
The GM was apologetic about the AC. He also interacted well with all of the items that were broken (mostly due to the lack of AC). Very inviting and accommodating.
Particularly interesting or different
No
Story
Difficulty
Hard
We found most of the puzzles straightforward, but there were a couple that were somewhat challenging and took the whole team to solve. There are a lot of pieces to the puzzles and we weren't surprised that it took almost all of our time.
Game tech
Mechanical
Ideal number of players
4
We played with four: three experienced and one relative newb who was definitely value added.
Scary
Not scary
Minimum age
8
Nothing scary or inappropriate in the room, but the puzzle were a little more challenging.
Was anything broken?
Yes
Semi-Spoiler Alert: the idea is to gather a common item from each section of the room and insert it into a specific spot to obtain a means to escape the room. Whether because of the heat, or not, as soon as we dropped the first item into the specific spot, the means to escape popped out and we had the final solution. Not much the GM could do at that point. In another area, we were stuck for ~10 minutes because we were supposed to obtain some written documents to help solve a problem. Most likely, due to the heat, the wood in the wooden box that contained these documents had expanded and would not open using "the pinky rule" (if you can't move it with a pinky it isn't supposed to move -- that way you don't break stuff). The GM eventually came in and we yanked and yanked until it came open, at which point he gave us a couple of minutes back on the clock (frustrating). Additionally, there were a couple of other puzzles that we had to manipulate to get to work due to the heat or being worn out (although the wear wasn't excessive). Our GM was as helpful and apologetic as he could be.
Live actors
No
Physically active
Not at all
Accessibility
Very accessible open space with good lighting.
Easy to find location
Yes
Parking
Easy
Safety
Yes
