Escape The Mad Hatter

Escape from the Madhatter: We found ourselves caught in the Madhatter's twisted game to keep us trapped in Wonderland. Pros: Escape from the Madhatter introduced us to a whole new approach to the escape room concept. Our team could compete against up to three other teams in this intense intellectual exercise that had us scurrying from one room to the next every five minutes. Our goal was essentially to successfully solve four individual puzzles in each of the four rooms before the other teams completed the same four puzzles. The trick was that we had to rotate from one puzzle to the next every five minutes and avoid leaving hints for other teams to pick up on. Sounded like a great idea in theory, right? Cons: The problem was with the reality. We loved the concept, but found the process extremely frustrating. Essentially it was like working on a multilinear room with multiple puzzles at once but being interrupted and forced to move to another puzzle and then back again every few minutes. This was challenging for the brain and frankly mostly ridiculous at times. The process was even further complicated by the game master who interrupted frequently to give us answers and hurry us along. We found ourselves rushed, distracted, confused, and angry especially by the end of the game. We "successfully" escaped but felt it was more a result of the free answers provided by the game master than by any success on our part. As the primary puzzle solver in each of the four rooms, I left feeling like my brain was in complete meltdown mode as a result of overuse. This was one of those rooms that had us shouting to escape room owners again: "Enough with the gimmicks already! Just focus on creating good, logical puzzles and we promise we will have a great time!" Time to take the madness out of this Madhatter game. ​

Interesting concept that works for better or worse. There’s four main rooms, and you get 5 minutes in each room before cycling to the next one. You do the full cycle 3 times, unless you finish early. Again, you’ve got to wait for others to finish if you do finish early, which isn’t fun. The concept was unique enough, though, so I say if you walk in and don’t expect an immersive experience or even a solid escape room, you might just enjoy yourself. It’s certainly a unique concept, and by lowering your expectations, you’ll see the best parts of it.

Okay room. It hypha’s a weird setup, where you rotate to a different room every so many minutes. This is made it confusing and sometimes a waste of time. We finished one of the rooms early on, but around till it was our turn to get to get back to a room that we were stuck on. And since you are rotating rooms, you can’t leave anything for the next group. It would be fun to do with a large group that you are competing against.

When my brother and I (our group) dominated and beat the other groups, we ended up having to wait for every other group to finish. Not always a fun thing to do.

There's a mechanic that some people might hate but I found ok.

Oh man. This was bad. Imagine a high school project combined with a ludicrous style of play and you get this room. Atmosphere was a joke with hand drawn puzzles and paint slapped on. Room dynamics made no sense with time limits on each section before moving on to the next. If you were done with your puzzle, you just sat there until the time was up to move. Non sensical. Unfortunately this concept seemed like it was literally conceived from someone who was Mad.