Siren's CoveEscape Hour Point RustonEscape roomIRLBefore I begin, let me provide some context. Firstly, I played 1 room at this location on the day of this review. Secondly, I have experienced hundreds of escape rooms to date. Lastly, this review represents a blend of my personal experiences, preferences, and objective facts. My review is divided into multiple sections, each receiving a sub-score from 1 to 5 stars. The final score is a cumulative aggregate of all these sub-scores. The review categories include: Pre-experience The experience itself Post-experience 🗝 PRE-EXPERIENCE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Starting off with the booking process, Escape Hour Point Ruston's website was superb, easy to navigate, and immersive with its lore and attractive art. They utilize Resova, which is my preferred booking software for its simplicity and effectiveness. Upon arrival, the exceptional staff showcased their care through their knowledge, friendliness, and attentiveness, complemented by a pristine lobby. The pre-experience was definitely top-tier, making an excellent first impression. 🗝 THE EXPERIENCE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Diving into the experience of Siren's Cove, it was unquestionably one of the best escape rooms I've ever encountered. The set was incredible and meticulously maintained, with nothing broken or worn out. The room's cleanliness was noticeable and appreciated. The puzzles were grand, logical, and contributed to a highly immersive adventure. It transcended being just an escape room - it was a complete, enthralling experience. 🗝 POST-EXPERIENCE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ The post-experience was equally fantastic. The game masters were engaging, open to answering questions, and participated in our celebration, enhancing our sense of achievement. The entire process at this venue was streamlined and optimized for consumer enjoyment, making for a well-rounded and enjoyable conclusion. OVERALL RATING: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ out of 5 The key factors contributing to this perfect score were: 🔒 The extraordinary and caring staff. 🔒 The high-quality escape room experience, arguably one of the best. 🔒 The cleanliness of the venue. 🔒 The friendly and engaging environment. 🔒 The exceptional organization of the entire process. As a seasoned escape room player, I highly recommend Escape Hour Point Ruston, and particularly the Siren's Cove experience. This is not just a personal viewpoint but also an acknowledgment of the high standards they've set in the escape room industry. Enjoy your adventure!
Rogue's CoveEscape Hour - VineyardEscape roomIRLLike a Disneyland ride, honestly. I would play this over and over again. The BEST in Utah BY FAR!
Neverland The Hunt For ThinkerbellRed Giant Escape RoomsEscape roomIRLI'm going to preface this with a few things. One: We played 3 of their rooms back to back on the same day. Two: I have played hundreds of escape rooms. Three: this review is based on my experience and has some of my personal preferences and opinions mixed in with facts. I like to break my reviews into multiple parts and provide each part with a sub-score from 1 to 5 stars and, in the end, provide a cumulative aggregate score based on all of the sub-scores. The areas that I review are as follows: - Pre-experience (booking process, rules and initial interaction, pre-game logistics) - The experiences itself (immersion, puzzles, story, game flow, set, cleanliness, clues, clue delivery system, actors, game masters, and room element functionality) - Post-experience (exit from the experience, picture, and wrap up.) 🗝 PRE-EXPERIENCE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ So to start, I liked their website. It was easy to use and mobile-friendly. The booking software is Resova which is my preferred booking software. The room art and descriptions are nice and informative. Though I do believe they do a poor job saying on their website that you MUST bring 4 or more people to play, or it may cause issues. We didn't find out until we arrived that typically you have to bring at least 4. We thought it was just a ticket minimum thing for financial reasons like other establishments, not gameplay reasons. We happily paid for 4 tickets even though there were only 3 of us. The parking was easy, and the place was easy to find. We were greeted by a kind staff member and a clean lobby and restroom. The video for rules was informative, and the waivers were easy. A few things that didn't sit well with me: They give you free drinks if you write a review there on the spot. This caused inflated reviews and artificial scores. They have posters posted everywhere for weird micro up-sells for the rooms, like pay $90 to be a VIP for a room and get things, but it was vague and promoted you to ask an employee. Also, it had a variety of things posted to provide tips to staff which is just slightly tacky in my opinion, even though we ended up tipping everyone just to be kind, and they really pushed it. More on this later. Now, after the initial logistics, we locked up our things and had the info given to us, which was good. And we went into the experience. 🗝 THE EXPERIENCE: ⭐️ Let's start with the good. The actor/game master in the room (not my preference to have a game master in the room, so that part isn't good) was in character the whole time, had a great accent, and was helpful...because he needed to be... And the set was decent, not great, but a lot of square footage, and above average, I'd say, in terms of effort. Unfortunately, that's all the good I can say about this room. Now on to the bad: Again like their other rooms, this one was also not the cleanest. Dated, worn, and looked neglected. Additionally, this escape room suffered from a couple of glaring issues. First: there was far too much MATH. Math kills the flow, the mood; it kills everything, in my opinion, in escape rooms. Second, there were many actual puzzles in this room, like puzzles you buy at the store and try to figure out, whether it be puzzle pieces or strange puzzle games. It felt like they gathered all escape room "like" target games and shoved them into this escape room. I found myself with pieces to several puzzles all at once while trying to solve multiple math problems all at once. It was chaos. So much so the in-room game master was literally walking us through the entire thing; he didn't stop talking. A group of 3 people who have done hundreds of escape rooms - and we were very, very lost. Listen, I go to escape rooms to enjoy the experience, not to win all the time; but when I find myself in an escape room that is frustrating, and only 5% of the experience actually makes sense to me, often, this is indicative of improper game flow, and lack of creativeness. My teammates also shared my feelings. The story didn't make sense; the puzzles were disjointed and confusing. At one point, our game master told us, "yes, you have everything you need for that puzzle" - we tried and tried to figure it out, spent a good 10 minutes on it, and gave up. We made it into another room, and there on the wall was the key to the puzzle we were told we had everything for. I look over at the game master, and he gives me a confusing shrug. So it seemed he was even confused at times with everything that was going on. With an experience riddled with too many locks, math problems, and actual puzzles, this escape room is nothing to write home about. 🗝 POST-EXPERIENCE: ⭐️ The post-experience was fine. We were left with a lot of questions, and the game master wasn't interested in connecting the dots for us. The picture walls were nice. OVERALL RATING: ⭐️ out of 5 The primary factors causing the low score: 🔒 set cleanliness and upkeep 🔒 way too many mechanical locks, as well as way too much variety of the same type of lock, making it hard to open because they were hard to read or figure out. 🔒game flow lacks logic and constancy. 🔒puzzles were redundant and required a lot of reading and a lot of help. 🔒game master in the room. 🔒 way too much math. 🔒The game master HAD to help the whole time due to the game lacking cohesion. 🔒way too many actual puzzles with puzzle pieces and puzzle-like games - the kind you can find at target.
Xenomorph: The Queen's SpawnRed Giant Escape RoomsEscape roomIRL𓆜𓋘𓄁 𓊛𓇙𓋸𓌤𓌥 𓌦 𓅐𓆢 𓆣 𓀉𓆤 𓆥 𓅑𓆘 𓆙 𓅒𓄙 𓄚 𓄛 𓅓𓃺 𓃻 𓅔 𓅕 𓃕 𓃖 𓃗 𓎷 𓄁𓎸𓅖 𓅽 𓅾 𓅿𓅗 𓅘 𓇆 𓇇𓅙 𓅚 𓁵 𓁶𓂵 𓂶𓃝𓋲 𓋳𓀬 𓅛𓁃 𓂺𓅜 �𓅝𓃄 �𓄁𓅞𓂙 𓅟𓂿 𓆜𓋘𓄁 𓊛𓇙𓋸𓌤𓌥 𓌦 𓅐𓆢 𓆣 𓀉𓆤 𓆥 𓅑𓆘 𓆙 𓅒𓄙 𓄚 𓄛 𓅓𓃺 𓃻 𓅔 𓅕 𓃕 𓃖 𓃗 𓎷 𓄁𓎸𓅖 𓅽 𓅾 𓅿𓅗 𓅘 𓇆 𓇇𓅙 𓅚 𓁵 𓁶𓂵 𓂶𓃝𓋲 𓋳𓀬 𓅛𓁃 𓂺𓅜 𓂨𓅝𓃄 𓄁𓅞𓂙 𓅟𓂿This review contains spoilers.Unscramble𓀗
Deep South: The Butcher's BasementRed Giant Escape RoomsEscape roomIRLI’m going to preface this with a few things. One: We played 3 of their rooms back to back on the same day. Two: I have played hundreds of escape rooms. Three: this review is based on my experience and has some of my personal preferences and opinions mixed in with facts. I like to break my reviews into multiple parts and provide each part with a sub-score from 1 to 5 stars and, in the end, provide a cumulative aggregate score based on all of the sub-scores. The areas that I review are as follows: - Pre-experience (booking process, rules and initial interaction, pre-game logistics) - The experiences itself (immersion, puzzles, story, game flow, set, cleanliness, clues, clue delivery system, actors, game masters, and room element functionality) - Post-experience (exit from the experience, picture, and wrap up.) 🗝 PRE-EXPERIENCE: ⭐️⭐️⭐️ So to start, I liked their website. It was easy to use and mobile-friendly. The booking software is Resova which is my preferred booking software. The room art and descriptions are nice and informative. Though I do believe they do a poor job saying on their website that you MUST bring 4 or more people to play, or it may cause issues. We didn’t find out until we arrived that typically you have to bring at least 4. We thought it was just a ticket minimum thing for financial reasons like other establishments, not gameplay reasons. We happily paid for 4 tickets even though there were only 3 of us. The parking was easy, and the place was easy to find. We were greeted by a kind staff member and a clean lobby and restroom. The video for rules was informative, and the waivers were easy. A few things that didn’t sit well with me: They give you free drinks if you write a review there on the spot. This caused inflated reviews and artificial scores. They have posters posted everywhere for weird micro up-sells for the rooms, like pay $90 to be a VIP for a room and get things, but it was vague and promoted you to ask an employee. Also, it had a variety of things posted to provide tips to staff which is just slightly tacky in my opinion, even though we ended up tipping everyone just to be kind, and they really pushed it. More on this later. Now, after the initial logistics, we locked up our things and had the info given to us, which was good. And we went into the experience. 🗝 THE EXPERIENCE: ⭐️⭐️ Let’s start with the good. I enjoyed the intro. You get bags put over your head, and it’s spooky. The set was above average in terms of production. There is a lot of square footage and multiple rooms, which I liked. Unfortunately, that’s about it. Now onto the bad. The room is dirty and worn. There was dust, dirt, and grime in many places giving off grubby vibes. There’s no reason for it to be dirty; the staff should be able to stay on top of cleanliness. There were many spots where the set could have used maintenance and upkeep with paint chipping and things looking dated and overused. There’s too much math. This location loves to use math in all of their rooms, and it kills the flow. Escape rooms should be done throwing in hard, pointless math as a puzzle. There are more creative and intuitive ways to create puzzles and game flow, and math isn’t one of them. There are too many locks. Mechanical locks are abundant and, at some points it, purely overwhelming. There’s an actor in there with you the whole time, and the actor is the game master, and they also give you all the clues you need. I don’t like this. They become another player, and your experience doesn’t feel private and messes with the group's vibe. We had to be walked through a lot of it because some things simply just didn’t make sense. We as a group have played hundreds of rooms, and there were many times we didn’t have any clue what to do, and we would receive help, and the help we got made no logical sense. The story felt fragmented and inconsistent. There were also tech and puzzle elements that didn’t fit the theme or story. They do this thing with red locks and red sticker dots that tell you not to touch something or mess with them; that kills the immersion for me. I hate do not touch stickers and things of that nature. It ruins immersion and is not needed. Don’t put things in a room you don’t want people to touch and hide your resetting access points to seamlessly integrate into the set as if they aren’t even there. I felt more stuck and frustrated than accomplished and productive, which often indicates a poor game flow and puzzle implementation. The experience lacked luster, was mundane, and at times frustrating. Heavily inundated with locks and big leaps in logic make the game hard to play and succeed. 🗝 POST-EXPERIENCE: ⭐️⭐️ The post-experience was fine. The host fell flat and didn’t really celebrate with us or as us any engaging questions like our favorite part or anything. But she did make sure to beckon us over to tip the actors, which felt forced and kind of awkward. We ended up tipping anyways but just felt tacky. The picture walls were nice. OVERALL RATING: ⭐️⭐️ out of 5 The primary factors causing the low score: 🔒 set cleanliness and upkeep 🔒 way too many mechanical locks, as well as way too much variety of the same type of lock, making it hard to open because they were hard to read or figure out. 🔒game flow lacks logic and constancy. 🔒puzzles were redundant, required a lot of reading, and a lot of help. 🔒game master in the room.
