Trickstermac
57 escape rooms
I think this might be the last escape room in a national franchise that I go to. There are so many great escape rooms in Los Angeles which are works of passion and show it. The city doesn’t need some franchise out of Florida moving in with licensed themes and a cookie-cutter franchise feel. I had high hopes that the rooms would have impressive production values and truly immersive design. Instead we found a basic series of puzzles. This one is literally a room with white walls. There was no character or personality to the experience. We checked in with one person, were walked to the room by another person, shown into the room by a third person and then had two different GMs watching and giving clues during the actual game. It was clear from the way we were handed off from one staff member to another that we weren’t getting any individual attention. I can’t blame the individuals working there, because that seems to be the intended design of the experience. The kid we did this with enjoyed some of the elements, but all-in-all I felt as though I had just been pushed through the gears of their franchise.
Gameplay
The gameplay was herky-jerky. And you’re interrupted every ten minutes by a pre-recorded voice telling you to go faster.
Atmosphere
There is no character to the space and it in no way feels like the private art gallery of a Russian mobster. It’s a series of puzzles with some sloppy prints of classical art thrown about.
Customer service
It’s a branch of an escape room franchise located next to a Hollywood amusement park. They churn people through and I felt less from the GMs then as I usually feel from a ride operator at Disneyland. Furthermore, hints when requested repeatedly gave us hints to puzzles we had already solved. And nothing was said when went blew half our time trying to push buttons that didn’t do anything. We asked for a hint. It would have been easy just to say “those buttons aren’t part of the game” instead of guiding us to the solution to a puzzle we had already solved
Particularly interesting or different
No
Story
Flimsy
Difficulty
Hard
Most of the room was easy to medium level, but because of some room elements not functioning, we wasted a lot of time trying to solve a puzzle that had been disconnected in the room.
Game tech
High tech
The high point was when the 12-yr old in our group had to crawl through a laser security system.
Ideal number of players
3
Scary
Not scary
Minimum age
8
Was anything broken?
Yes
There were a number of part of the room which had either broken or been deemed too difficult and taken out of the sequence of the experience. But the elements themselves were still in the room. They actively took away from the immersive experience and also served as annoying time-wasting red-herrings.
Live actors
No
Physically active
Somewhat
Accessibility
One puzzle requires colors to be matched.
Easy to find location
Yes
Parking
Medium
They validate for valet parking. But I don’t know how much. We parked in the regular Univeral City Walk parking structure for $10
