The Area 51 Adventure

The Area 51 escape room is a really cool experience. It has a sleek, high-tech vibe with fun elements like drone flying, and a game master who’s integrated into the story in a creative way. This room is definitely on the harder side, with a lot to get through. The first room is quite dark, which makes it tough to see, and a few of the puzzles weren’t very intuitive. My biggest complaint is the amount of reading involved—it slowed things down quite a bit. Some puzzles also seemed designed for three or more players, but since it was just two of us, the game master stepped in to help by adjusting a few things, which was much appreciated. I’d recommend purchasing the extra five-minute option because there’s a lot to get through. Even though we didn’t escape, it was still a fun and memorable experience. I’d rate this room an 8 out of 10 overall.

This room was ambitious in its use of technology to accentuate the theme. However, the design itself could better make use of the whole experience. If you are a fan of drones and controlling things from a remote, you would like a few of the select puzzles here. However, for the majority of puzzles, it felt unnecessarily difficult to solve because (1) either the light was dim or (2) they were time-wasters. There was a part where our game master had to manually override the system due to a mechanical glitch. In terms of originality, I will give Area 51 credit for the way that they integrated the game master into the story. Unfortunately though, the actual interaction itself and the lackluster puzzles left me feeling like I wanted more! My trio ended up doing their three escape rooms at this location in one day. I would skip this one and go to Poe or Pirates. Thank you to our GM, Kashes, for making sure that we were moving right along!

I had a love-hate reaction to this room. Theming was good; sets were well done and at times, spectacular. But there were a few tech-related puzzles that were unnecessarily difficult to figure out how to navigate and wasted too much valuable time early. And WAY too much manual reading with low lighting and very difficult-to-read letters on a screen. One puzzle required someone to spin a wheel constantly for a long time (and thus removed from the rest of the room). The mechanical puzzles in room 2 (or 3?) didn’t work well - which, again, wasted too much of our time unnecessarily. I’d say you either need more than 3 people (we only had three) or have to nail every puzzle early. There are a lot of rooms and lots to solve, overall. So, artistically, Area 51 gets high marks, but the game play, broken puzzles, and uninspired GM interaction left a bad taste in my mouth. Still gets a 👍, overall, but sad that it didn’t go better.

Really great room! Good theming and decor with lots to do. Host was a little hard to hear throughout but the puzzles were all great. Highly recommend!

This was a fun room with LOTS to do over multiple rooms. As a group of four experienced escape room players, we were busy the entire time and escaped with under a minute to spare. Definitely some fun mechanics and suprises... and a few puzzle types I had never seen before. We really enjoyed the concept of the GM being part of our "team" and getting to see them on video at the start of the game. Seems like a tactic that could be used by more escape rooms.

There was not a coherent path through the puzzle. It just seemed random. There was no debrief by staff. Challenging but not a favorite.

Recommend the other two rooms they have but not this room. This room could possibly be good if you had a more interactive game master.

Horrible! Everything in the first room was janky. Nothing worked in the second room and when we failed because we had no clues and no help, and couldn't get the big wheel contraption to work, she wouldn't even show us what we missed. Just awful! Don't waste your time.

Game was fun and immersive. Just wish our team of 2 didn’t have to buy 4 tickets.

I thought overall the room was good, some of the puzzles were pretty finicky and strange but pretty cool nonetheless.