The Legend of Sorro Bay

I picked Sweet Escapes as a literal and figurative palate cleanser (after a solo experience yesterday left me wanting). Unfortunately, the most I can say about Sorro Bay is that it looked nice. A mechanical problem in my room required two interventions by the GM (one of which led her to grant me extra time), and while that’s normally frustrating by itself, some elements of the puzzle design ratcheted up my irritation considerably. For example: five numbers being given for a four digit lock, with one of the four numbers in the main room being a red herring and a fifth number hidden in what’s clearly a retired puzzle piece (a barrel with a ball-maneuvering maze game that had been discontinued). I really wanted to love this room since it’s a riff on the Nemesis Club concept, but the execution of the puzzle design itself and the food component afterwards left me wanting. Notwithstanding the GM, the other employees ignored me despite me being the only customer in the building. Glad I went, won’t go again.

Really fun room with great set design and fun, creative puzzles that were totally fair and moderately challenging!! Recommend with a smaller group — 4-5 is probably ideal.

So I did really like this room and recommend you do it. The only thing that affected it for me was that this is the exact same room in Monterey but with a different name. A different company has one there that is much scarier and has a few extra puzzles and I had already done that one. This one had one puzzle that they didn't and they had toned down the scary a lot so it was much more family-friendly. Either way I'm forgetful and we still got stuck and needed some hints and had a good time regardless. I just wish I knew ahead of time that they were going to be the same rooms. Be aware if you've done the Pier room in Monterey it's the same.

We did this as a team of 2. It was challenging and we barely made it out. We needed hints which were delivered really well and helped make the experience positive. Good puzzles and design of the environment. We had a couple notes for improvement, we felt the intro/entry process to the room was a little awkward and definitely felt rushed out of the room. The staff weren’t super eager to engage with us about the experience. The second note for improvement was a bigger deal. There are a few points in the room where you need to put your hand into an opening to retrieve something. In one of those, my hand got completely covered in black powder. It was unavoidable and I was shocked how dirty my hand was. We’re really relieved it wasn’t my wife ruining her white sweater. That would have been awful.

I rate this escape experience a 3.5/5 (ck out my bio for rating system). I love this business and wish I could give better scores to all their rooms (the other 2 got 3s). The sets are amazing but, unfortunately, the puzzles are just not intuitive which subtracts from my enjoyment level. I've done close to 100 escape rooms and after a while, you can tell which rooms are not intuitive - when you are sitting there most of the time trying to figure out what the hell to do next! There was a lot of that in this room. Which then required a lot of nudging from the GM. In addtiion, there were many times (just like in their other rooms) where something opened but there was no indication of what or where it was. A few of the hints were telling us to check something that opened. There's also an inactive puzzle in the room which I wasted a little time on because I didn't realize it was no longer in use. Pretty impressive ending though! It's a great business with great people and yummy desserts but the rooms could use some more intuitiveness and clarity when puzzles are solved.

This room was SO good! I felt like I was in a Goonies/Pirates movie! It was so immersive and epic! Theming was off the charts cool! All kinds of new high tech pieces mixed with traditional locks and combos. This is one of my top 5 rooms if not top 3! I can't wait to go back and try their 3rd room soon!

This room was SO good! I felt like I was in a Goonies/Pirates movie! It was so immersive and epic! Theming was off the charts cool! All kinds of new high tech pieces mixed with traditional locks and combos. This is one of my top 5 rooms if not top 3! I can’t wait to go back and try their 3rd room soon!

I loved this escape room!! The puzzles flowed well, the technology was awesome, and it had a few aspects Im never seen in escape rooms before!! I would definitely recommend this escape room to anybody!!