Pirates of the Mediterranean: The Curse of the Crystal Cavern

We recently tackled this room, and overall, it was a solid experience. The room had some really cool design elements that definitely pulled you into the pirate theme, and there were a number of layered puzzles that made you think. I can see why this one carries a “hard” difficulty rating. It definitely kept us on our toes. That said, there were a couple of mechanical hiccups that broke the immersion a bit. Not deal-breakers, but noticeable. What took away from the fun more than anything was some wear and tear on the puzzles themselves. Tiny devices, small, faded symbols, and a bit of overuse made certain tasks more frustrating than challenging. A refresh or update would really elevate the experience. Overall, it was good. Not amazing, but far from bad. If you like a challenge and don’t mind a few rough edges, it’s worth a try.

There was one puzzle with the suns that really stumped us. The second room was easier than the third. It has an exciting intro on par with Pirates of the Caribbean. Enjoyed Top Tier so much I made an extra post about all four of our escapes at this establishment: https://www.instagram.com/p/DFWD0RKyEQI/?igsh=Y2RncXp2dnE0NWQ0

This was a great room! This was my 49th room (44W - 5L) which I played as a group of five adults with similar statistics ranging in ages from 22 to 59. I still consider myself a bit of a novice since I ride the coattails of my teammates quite a bit. The decorations, story and puzzles were top notch and in perfect working condition. Despite having a couple of skeletons in the room, the game was not scary and could be enjoyed by kids (with adult chaperones). The room was mostly non-linear and mostly mechanical (lock/key which we love) so everyone had something to do and no one was standing around bored. We finished with about 20 min remaining and no hints, but I would not say it is an easy room. There were several puzzles that required a few different brains to come up with solutions. We're looking forward to trying Avalanche tomorrow.

Amazing room! The set was beautiful, lots of thought into the design! All of the tech worked for us too! The multi-layer approach to the puzzles was very clever, challenging but very satisfying to solve… I appreciate the creativity and strategy you can tell the owners put into this. Few good laughs, definite wow moments too! Go into this noting that details are everywhere which is pretty cool so vocalize where you find things to the team. It’s a top 5 game for us, so much FUN!

I had a pretty poor experience with the room. Yes the atmosphere inside the room is great and some of the puzzle were very unique and fun, but unfortunately a couple puzzles were mistakenly left already completed or the locks in opened. Plus my group somehow found a way to skip a step and it caused the trigger to activate the next part of the escape to fail. So we wasted a few minute before the GM realized and activated it for us. This ended up messing up later steps too and we had missing pieces for puzzles that we just ended up brute forcing. Overall this left us with lots of confusion between if we were doing something wrong or if the puzzles were broken throughout the whole run. My group doesn’t usually use hints but we had to speak with the master and ask a few questions to make sure everything was working ok. This ruined the immersion.

My favorite at Top Tier. A great cinematic intro got us into the spirit and multiple puzzle paths kept a group of four enthusiasts busy for quite a while! One multistage difficult puzzle was a definite stand out for me, and a cool reveal kept things fresh. Definitely with the drive 👍

As with any of our ratings, we work on a 50 point total scale divided into 5 10-point categories. They are as follows. Location (ease of access, near other things) User Friendliness (difficulty, need for hint) Service (helpfulness, hint quality, enthusiasm) Aesthetics (decor, theme, variety) Bang for Buck (was it worth it?) We attempted to escape from the PIRATE themed room. Location: 7 While it is tucked away from the freeway, it is located on a main street and is easy to get to with plenty of parking in the lot. There are some restaurants in the area within half a mile. User Friendliness: 7 This room was fairly difficult at times and made you think outside the box a bit. We definitely got stuck on some parts where some clues were, let's say, in places we wouldn't have thought to look. With a group of 4, we still had 5-6 tasks to get through before time ran out. It's definitely doable, we just didn't get the clues how we think we should have. Service: 7 The lady working was very kind and explained all the rules ahead of time and was thorough. She was very monotone and straight forward, not really hyping up the event. When asked for hints she was very direct but didn't tell us exactly what to do. Aesthetics: 8 The decor, props, and construction of the room was very well done. Nothing seemed to be cheap and it was very well thought out of a plan. Definitely felt like we were "transported" to this situation. Only gripe was felt little small at times. They also have 3-4 other themes. Bang for Buck: 9 The price was reasonable. The theme/room was well done. If someone asked us to do another theme room here, we'd say absolutely. Overall Score: 37/50

Still fun, but… things can be better. Despite a fun and seemingly immersive setup, in the end the room is just a gen 1 escape with slightly better than average set decoration and narrative beats. Ultimately the frustration comes from a long series of disjointed, nonsensical puzzles that aren’t motivated and rely too heavily on overlapping symbols. It’s clear the creators have genuine talent and creativity, unfortunately it just did not end up in much of the final design of the room.