Irvine School of Wizardry and the Goblin's Secrets

This room transports and immerses you in such a fun room with cool transitions, magic, and thoughtful design. We loved the room and it was super fun! Got the extra puzzle too. Great exp!!

A pretty well-built room with a great atmosphere and immersive theme. The room/puzzles are pretty linear, but nothing felt frustrating to the point where you felt unreasonably stuck. We did need some hints, but to be honest it was our fault that we failed to progress, rather than something inherent to the puzzles. I'm not sure what the future design of this room will look like, because it looks like this room could be doubling up as a house for a 2nd room, or perhaps they're expanding this room to have 2 parts. Either way, this was a great room overall and looking forward to what they will build inside of it.

This was AWESOME! Great theming, great game flow, great game master!! Worthwhile and a must play!

Another strong game from Hidden Donkey. Wonderful sets, sounds, lights, and production. Decent storyline and goals. Somewhat linear narrative flow. It was also somewhat strange that a future game in the same space was in development so some clues and objects in the space were not part of the game we were playing. They were clearly labelled as "part of the other game", but it's odd to have them potentially distracting from the game at hand.

I finally see why people rave about this room. I only had time to do one of the Hidden Donkey rooms and all my friend who had played said it had to be Goblin’s Secret. It lived up to the hype. The immersion is so real in this room and the last part of the experience was spectacular. I do wish they would have let us take photos with our wands in the first room. It is interesting how they’re building two tracks for two different games in one room. We did have to ask for a few hints.

That was awesome! Really cool effects! Do this one!

Irvine School of Wizardry has outdone itself with a new installment of its own wizarding world escape rooms! I enjoyed this one even more than the Dragon Wand, and I loved that one. Fans of Harry Potter will likely enjoy this magical take on finding Fantastic Beasts. Every witch and wizard gets to use wands to cast magic, although I feel that it’s not as utilized in this room compared to the other one. But the amazing transitions, fantastical beasts, and fun finale more than make up for it. It’s a big set, though much of the tasks revolve around following a puzzling set of linear instructions. It was perfect for our group of 2, and we even got bonus adaptive puzzles because we were flying though the room. There are a number of non-puzzles, marked with green Slytherin-esque snakes that are NOT part of the room, which is confusing. But apparently, they will be part of an upcoming room, presumably also set in the non-copyrighted Wizarding World. Whenever that happens, I’m all in, because to me, these rooms are my wizarding legacy!

This game has several strong elements to appeal to a wide audience, including a well-built set, fun puzzles, strong reveals, good tech, and a popular theme. But still I have mixed feelings about Goblins. The designers are trying to tackle the perpetual issue of how to get more use out of a game by building two tracks in the same space. It was frustrating to see features not in play, that came across as Red Herrings or Ghost Puzzles. I did like the mechanic used to direct progress through the game and could see a variation working for the second game track. I also had issue with some sequencing. There is an elaborate mid-game reveal that should function as a transition but instead backtracks which doesn’t fit the narrative at all. While puzzles were mostly fun, several were too directed, especially the ones using wands. There were too many written notes of explanation, and the last logic puzzle made a huge leap in complexity compared to the rest. While I would recommend this as a decent game, I would also lower expectations around some of the hype.

One of the best rooms we have done to date. The owners put a significant amount of care and detail into this room that makes it almost unbelievably realistic. The.... transportation is something I have never seen before. The game play and their unique way of adding or subtracting puzzles based on your team's speed through the game is amazing. I don't think we have played a game that does this and it makes the experience all the better because we truly feel like we got ours money's worth. 10/10.

This place is great, I’d love to see more interactive puzzles and fewer classic locks but theming and execution of even the classic locks was phenomenal. Will definitely be back to try the other room and what appears to be an alternative variant of the same room