The Chesapeake Bay Butcher

One of the best

It was scary lots of screams so if you like horror rooms then this rooms for you pretty dark too but you earn your light. Don’t touch the ducks mason jars or beer cans! That’s a warning!

This is the third room we’ve done with Colonial Escape Room in Williamsburg and they’re consistently among the best between VA Beach and Richmond. This will probably be my longest review so I’ll focus on the SCARY, IMMERSION and PUZZLES. The room has been reviewed as one of the scariest on the east coast. While, that could be true (and the waiver discussion reinforces that expectation), the biggest bogey man is the one your brain creates out of the darkness and low lighting. If you can just push through what you have to do knowing it’s a game, you will leave very satisfied. Think of it as a very well executed Halloween house that you might experience at a theme park but more immersive and with a game element. Immersion is top notch. Really feels like a place you shouldn’t be and it’s a rather big escape room in its entirety. You’ll need to work quickly and keep moving. They say they put you in a horror movie and it’s as close as any of the rooms we’ve done anywhere (pushing 20). No clock in the room and no hints from your game master who is otherwise very involved in your game. There are a lot of locks in the room. A LOT. If there’s one ding on this room is that virtually every puzzle is a word or number lock with a couple exceptions. And while it’s a very linear sequence, we were able to compile clues that made it unclear what went with what. In hindsight there are means to sort it out of the very low itself didn’t pose a challenge to even seeing some of the clues or locks. No phone lights are allowed. We were hung up a bit in one area and were pushed past a couple solutions to get us to the FINALE in time to have a chance at success. That was another sequence of interesting and fun puzzles that we solved through someone’s attention to detail and, honestly, experience from another room. Despite being pushed through a couple puzzles we left this room excited and satisfied more than any other room we’ve done. There are so many puzzles that it didn’t matter and made me question whether the number of puzzles could actually be slimmed down a bit. Definitely constructed in a way that it could be optional. Highly recommended. Fight through your fear, don’t let it distract you from the puzzles and pay attention to details. In return you’ll have the best horror themed escape room yet.

This deserves all the recognition and awards they already earned! One of the BEST rooms and the SCARIEST we’ve experienced! Definitely worth it! A must try! We’ve done 30+ escape rooms and this is the most memorable one! 👻

Absolutely terrifying and immersive room! By far my favorite that I have done out of 39. Puzzles were fairly easy but the low lighting and scares make this room just a little harder. Dark corridors and discomforting ambient noise bring the immersion to another level. This room is a must for anyone seeking spooks. Oliver was a wonderful gm!

This room (or should I say rooms because this space is huge) was excellent! It is extremely well thought out and they did a great job making it immersive and scary (in a fun way). Little details did not go unappreciated, from the way they clued no touch items while preserving the set design, the use of lighting and noise, storytelling, etc. The room is not difficult, but I think it actually works in your favor because the mind is impacted by fear’s influence and this room definitely makes you uneasy. I also liked the storytelling element and transition between rooms. We were surprised that they let us admire their control room which is located in the center of the room giving them access to be exactly where they need to be when- so well thought out. It is a fairly active room, meaning you move from room to room a lot. While it is scary, a lot of this room is just jump scares which were personally easy to “recover” from for me, but my husband did feel as though that anticipation did make him not think clearly the entire time. Overall, I would definitely recommend it!

Definitely scary but a really great escape room. We played with 4 people and it felt like the perfect amount of players. Beware there are points where you have to blindly enter dark areas so you need to have somebody in your group that is brave enough to do so lol. Also heads up this room does not give hints or really any way to interact/talk to game masters which wasn’t a problem at all just something to note if you’re used to hints. Hints weren’t really needed anyways.

This is probably our #1 favorite escape room that we’ve done so far- and we’ve done quite a few!! The puzzles and rooms were so detailed and fit the theme of the “butcher” so well. We liked that the rooms changed throughout the story and different clues were in different rooms so we had the run back and forth! I liked that the game master and employees were proud of the room and enjoyed hearing our feedback.

Hands down the best and scariest escape room in the Williamsburg area for at least 100 miles. I've done quite a few escape rooms with many different companies and this one sets the standard. It's a must do and you will be so glad you did. It's a total of 6 rooms and some hallways if you are also looking to know how big it is.

100% recommend this to others, Ayden was very kind and patient with us (we had 2 people who were new to escape rooms). He also gave us a few extra minutes to finish the puzzles at the end to escape.