Grandma's Attic

You can tell this business in general is not a labor of love. When we first walked in the lobby stunk, there were huge holes in the drywall and spider webs all over the place. It was filthy. The bathrooms are even worse with bugs everywhere. The lobby was super busy because it was a holiday weekend and the guy at the front desk said "go stand over there by those people and watch that video about the room" (for both our rooms, we had booked 2 for the day).... it was so loud we could barely hear the video. Then someone walked us to our room never told us to start and walked away to get us something to write on. The Ambiance was awful because we couldn't hear any of the music playing since there's no ceiling, all we heard was the people in the room yelling. Our game Masters were doing their best so I don't blame them because they did pay attention to when we asked for a hint. I think they're just set up to fail with a poorly designed system. You can tell the rooms were thrown together and not a lot was put into the decoration or design to make it feel finished....wires across the floor with duct tape over them, do not touch signs on literally half the stuff in the room. Here's the thing I think a day doing a bad escape room is still better than no escape room at all. If you're in Santa Barbara and haven't done it give it a try but don't expect anything for your money... if you have time to drive to a different one I would highly recommend that instead. Like someone else said these guys are only in business because they're in a touristy area on State Street in Santa barbara.

As an avid Morty user, I was nervous about spending my money on this room given the relatively low to mid reviews. After completing this room myself, though, I will say I don't think the other reviews do it justice. Yes, there are elements to the room I would have changed, such as certain technologies that may be in need of an upgrade or the laminated "no touch" stickers covering a majority of items in the room. However, there were some incredibly unique elements to this room I genuinely appreciated as a fan of spooky things and escape rooms. For one, the puzzles were very intriguing. Some made you think INCREDIBLY out of the box, and some were just neat designs! It is (to my knowledge) a fully mechanical room, so almost every puzzle is lock-based, but I don't particularly mind that! My friends and I didn't receive much direction upon first entering the room, though, so we did complete a couple puzzles out of order and find extra clues later when they were no longer needed. My advice: Everything you are given will have a purpose!! There is no need for guessing; everything is incredibly straightforward! Some puzzles almost felt TOO obvious, but to me that is why they were so genius! Total out-of-the-box thinking, which is what you should be hoping for when booking an escape room! There were a couple jump scares, so be forewarned, but they were SO cool! I am very used to the shock value auditory air-horn jump scares, but one visual scare in particular got me SO good! Very impressive as we were not expecting that! Also the soundtrack was so spooky! Definitely kept me immersed despite the room not being fully closed in at the top (the facility was tall; there was some drapings up above but no definitive ceiling directly above us, the facility shares one tall ceiling!)! We escaped in 37 minutes with one hint (we fully disregarded a puzzle towards the end and our GM nudged us in the right direction), but apparently that is an anomalous time to hint ratio! Generally, I would rank this room a medium difficulty as most things were self-explanatory, but I could see how people could get stuck on puzzles! Our Game Master, Isaiah, was friendly and kind, and never took an eye off of us throughout the room despite having at least one other group to facilitate! Overall, could it use a bit of an update? Probably. But the experience we had was good and I will absolutely be coming back to complete their three other rooms!

Really creepy vibe. If you like dolls. Have fun!!!!!

I’m not sure how long this business has been open, but with the amount of escape rooms now open it’s time to retire the laminated papers and white boards to take notes on when it doesn’t fit within the theme. The puzzles felt old escape room as in when they first started opening years ago. Parts of the room were great for atmosphere. There were several jump scares that genuinely got me. However, the best parts of the room had nothing to do with the puzzles. It’s very clearly hand built by the people who own it. I’ll always support the independent escape rooms rather than the corporate spaces popping up. Unfortunately, there were some odd aspects about the space in general. None of the rooms are completely closed off. Walls don’t reach the ceiling, so you can hear everyone in the other rooms, in the lobby while you are in your room. Which makes it difficult to hear each other in our room or if the GM is trying to give you a hint. Staff working there were very nice and incredibly polite. They need some support however. We came in on President’s Day so it was busy and they seemed to be struggling a bit. Groups were suppose to be going into rooms at exactly the same time and also ended up getting out at the same time. It’s on prime real estate being on State St, so we were just expecting a little bit more. If we’re back up in SB and we were looking for something to do I might come back but I won’t be clamoring to come back.