The Roosevelt Escape Room

The puzzles seemed more like busy work and were layered but didn’t flow… just when we thought we were done another room opened up…

The Great Houdini Escape Room: The 1915 Panama-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco attracted the brightest minds from around the world. The famous magician Harry Houdini allegedly built the first escape room as a challenge to those geniuses. Our less than brilliant group had 80 minutes to attempt the same puzzles and challenges that these legendary innovators faced over 100 years ago. The Roosevelt Escape Room: This room had some connection to Theodore Roosevelt and World War I. Although the historical narrative made little sense, we knew we had to solve puzzles to escape. Pros: Both rooms had awesome, AMAZING sets. High-tech, elaborately decorated rooms created an immersive feeling for game-players. The puzzles were all tied to the theme and were creative and unique to this escape room. A mix of puzzle types but many mechanical elements. The Houdini Room had a great storyline that carried throughout the entire experience. The storyline was less clearly articulated in the Roosevelt Room and seemed more of a hodgepodge of history. Puzzles were difficult in both rooms and definitely required the whole team. Palace Games is an absolute MUST-DO for escape room addicts. Cons: The game moderator's opening speech was too long and detracted from our initial enthusiasm. The large group size (they encourage 12) is way too big. These are such great rooms, it would be nice to take them all in with smaller groups. This may make it more difficult to solve the sheer number of puzzles in time, but the reduced stress level and ability to focus and listen to your teammates will create a better and much less chaotic experience in the end. Less is more in our opinion. We don't like to miss what's happening by having too many distractions.

Some of the tech is buggy, but the room is cool overall and had some fun co-op activities.

We only went over by about 15 seconds... not too shabby considering my 15 year old daughter and I were alone with five 12-year-olds... some of whom had never done an escape room before. This is a challenging room, and meant for a large group of adults. It's best to split your party into different groups and focus on the different puzzles. We had to have our host come into the room to help us several times because I could only be in so many places at once. He was absolutely wonderful, though, and the kids had a great time. My favorite puzzle was at the end. :)

Great room design. We have done all the rooms at palace of fine arts and this was probably slightly better than houdini but attraction and Edison were far better. Although even being one of the lesser rooms st palace, it was still miles better than most rooms. (Edison and attraction are just in a whole other league). Still an amazing room with a lot of fun and engaging puzzles

This room is hard. They lowered the minimum for this game due to covid to 4, and we tried with 4. Escaped in 95 minutes, and it's a 90 minute game. The game master had to come into our game to help us a few times (physically holding things, since there were so few of us). I prefer Edison to this game.

Of the 250+ rooms we’ve done, this is by far my absolute favorite. So many interesting puzzles. Great back and forth flow. Multiple rooms. Non linear and great for groups. I can’t wait to try their other rooms.

Second favorite room at the Palace of Fine Arts. These rooms always hold themselves to a high standard and I feel are worth the price point. Lots of high tech related puzzles here and a fun surprise at the end. Pay attention as there aren't really any red herrings and even if you don't work on it now, you will come back to them. It feels like I went through a journey with Roosevelt. Would suggest at least 6 people for this. Bully!