The Great Room

Great room. Lots of puzzles to do. Perhaps just as many puzzles as trophy room.

As Stephie always says, the sketchier the building the better the escape room will be!!!! Pull upyo this warehouse that’s kind of in the middle of nothing and walk into their haunted lobby and enjoy :) No seriously - This was our first ever escape room at 13th Hour and clearly it sucked us in because now we’ve done them all and are HUGE FANS. We love their “John Hayden” series, and are actually happy we started with this room. Having the theme with the characters makes it so much more fun and helps it be a more immersive experience. It was challenging, a little spooky, and we loved how consistent the theme was! Our gamemaster was awesome (as is the entire team here) and we think doing this as a group of 4 was perf. Nothing beats 13th Hours little personal touches at the end too!

Such a fun room with a fun twist ending. The puzzles were difficult yet intriguing and the set design was phenomenal as always. This is one of the more cut and dry rooms I have done but nonetheless it was fun. Definitely was pleasantly surprised by this room and the GM, as well as other patrons in the lobby, told us it was hard but we succeeded with time to spare!

First of all, literally just the outside of the building got us pumped. Coolest/craziest lobby of an escape room ive seen honestly. Like it was an attraction in itself. We kept noticing stuff all over the room that genuinely freaked me out. I loved how professional and efficient our GM was. This room had a lot of creative elements I’ve never seen before that continuously wowed me. We found it pretty challenging for just 2 people. Liked that it was pretty nonlinear - ideally you could have different teams working on different puzzles. A few puzzles took a while to solve, like you had to concentrate for 5-10 minutes. We were running around frantically the whole time so the time went by super fast. We escaped (though im pretty sure she added on a couple extra minutes!) but we honestly deserved to lose this one (to be fair, it’s been a while and we were rusty!) our GM was super attentive and gave us hints at just the right times without us having to ask. Loved how the hints were like riddles that fit the story. There were a few things we never would have figured out on our own. Glad we got to escape even though we needed so much help because the ending had an unforgettable twist! Overall I am so excited this place has so many other rooms and cant wait to do them all!!

The theming of the room was great and it had some interesting elements. However, there were a few puzzles that either didn’t work well, or were extremely tedious and felt like time wasters. I can see why people like it but it wasn’t for me personally.

An incredible room! I’ve never experienced an escape game like this. All the 13th Hour rooms are wonderful of course but this one and another room (find my review to see which one hehehe) are the best! The puzzles are truly well thought out with an amazing flow, and the atmosphere/ set will always have you impressed and using things you never thought you would. I am shocked we even completed this because it feels you are in there for so long! I normally feel rushed and like I don’t have enough time but it felt like perfect timing while we played.

This room is award winning for a reason. If you are anywhere in the tristate area, you have to make your way here to experience these games for yourself. Definitely not for the faint of heart (especially in October) but if you ever wanted to feel like the main character of a horror movie, this is the escape game for you.

Very immersive theming in set but puzzles often felt disconnected from narrative. A weak start kind of put a damper on the experience that has some good moments as it goes on.

Simply put the Great Room is great to play. 13th hour has created an entire horror-themed collection of escape rooms tied to the narrative of the murderous John Hayden family. These are large rooms in a warehouse/sized space and the designers really take advantage of it with their puzzle design. We got to enjoy having actors in the room during REA Escape Immerse Explore 1-day tour. They were funny spooky not scary so ask if available as their presence really adds to the experience.