The BasementTHE BASEMENT: A Live Escape Room Experience - SylmarEscape roomIRLMaybe the worst escape room experience I've had so far. The setup was great, the settings were even better. We came in knowing there's a live actor in the room and I was excited to see where the live actor was going to contribute.. The absolute worst live actor experience ever. I get they're supposed to give out hints, but honestly screaming and whining "HURRY UP, WE ONLY HAVE 10MINUTES LEFT" 200X in a row is super obnoxious and unhelpful. The puzzles are old-school and unintuitive: 4-digit codes and lock+keys everywhere. It was unfortunately a big let down for all the reviews this room has gotten.
Hotel On Road 6660Out - HHLAEscape roomIRLThe only thing this room has is its production value. The set design is great and it feels creepy as soon as you walk into the room. Everything that comes after was unfortunately one disappointment after another. We were aware, from other reviews, of the auto-hint system but did not expect them to be absolutely horrendous. Most of the puzzles were literally impossible to solve without the auto-hint system. However, the auto-hint is more of a step-by-step manual of what you need to do. Therefore, I couldn't even call what we did in that room solving puzzles. In addition, the story-telling was weak and uninteresting. So in the end, we paid $60pp to be told how to "solve puzzles" and get cheap jump scares. In addition to all that, our GM made our experience much much worse. We have a couple members in our group who doesn't like horror things. This was fine as we, as a group, agreed that we would never let them be the ones to be sacrificed or locked in a room on their own or other common horror escape room tropes. However, our GM repeatedly insisted that they be the one to do specific things despite literally all of our protests. At one point, our GM even spilled that "it's more fun if the easily scared ones are the one to do it". I can understand the sentiment, but what our group considers fun is to not have our more scared members harassed by our GM this way. Other members of the group are more than willing and would be thrilled to be the one left behind, so why make that decision for us. Let us enjoy the escape room experience that we paid for. Overall, we don't know if we even want to try the other rooms in this location. The puzzles and our GM have quite literally ruined our experience. Update: We contacted the manager of this location about our negative experience with the GM only to be completely disregarded. 2 members of our group contacted them separately and the manager straight up lied to one of us saying they've promised the other one a refund. We obviously pushed back against this and were actually promised a refund, only to have it rescinded with a generic email. We never outright requested a refund so I'm not sure what game they're playing here. Save your money and go to Maze Room or Quest Room instead.
