Tomb of the Gods

There's a lot of promise. The lounge is easily the best part. The melding of the themes, the overall design, the cameras looking in on the games, and the food/drink are amazing. That whole aspect of Portal Adventures is top notch and definitely makes it a great place to hang out. The actual escape room side of things was a bit disappointing. The general concept of the Portal organization tying together the rooms is neat. However, there wasn't much about Tomb of the Gods that stood out. The puzzles were pretty straightforward, the rooms weren't particularly memorable, and the immersive element was missing. Nothing was bad, but there are a lot of rooms in the Portland area (and specifically with a similar theme) with more to offer. On the positive side, Sam was a really great game master. He helped a lot when one of the puzzles wasn't working, and gave the right amount of guidance throughout. You could tell he was really enthusiastic about what he does. The biggest critique I have is that Portal Adventures does not have any interest in small groups. My Wife and I had actually been keeping tabs on when this location would open so that we could be there day one. We have done 50 rooms across the Portland/Vancouver/Clackamas area and this one was opening right next to our house and looked really promising. When we went to book, we saw that for groups of 3-6 (2 wasn't even an option) it was a flat rate that was equivalent to paying for 6 people. That is just completely unfathomable for the group of three that we have done most of these rooms with. I reached out to ask how this could possibly be the case, as I have never seen that significant of a requirement before (I've seen a couple that require 4 tickets be purchased). The response was: "This is due to the scale and large size of our adventures compared to other escape rooms. We've created some very large, custom theatrical sets for these adventures that require a great deal of coordination, and as a result require more players to solve. These adventures were designed for groups of 6+ players, but it is possible for groups of 4-5 to come and participate (Though quite challenging)". Well after months of waiting for family to come into town, I can tell you that is a bold-faced lie (at least for Temple of the Gods). There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that my wife and I would have breezed through that room on our own. Only one puzzle required two people, and there were nowhere near enough puzzles to make it unmanageable for a small team. I appreciate the confidence in themselves, but our team of 2-3 has bested much larger scale and challenging rooms. If you have a huge group of people that want to hang out and do escape rooms for the first time, Portal is a wonderful place to go. It is definitely catered for corporate team building activities. However, if you are an escape room enthusiast with a "small" team (I have only experienced one room that actually required four players), you are better off looking elsewhere. I love escape rooms, so I am eager to be proven wrong. I look forward to eventually doing Voyager, but unless the system changes up, I'll just wait until the next time family is in town to justify the unreasonable price.