The Room — Attraction in Edmonton

Honestly very disappointed. Did "the Tomb" escape room yesterday, and it was a big disappointment. Two broken props prevented us from being able to move forward and complete the room. At one point, we completed a puzzle, and nothing happened. Eventually the lady came into the room and started flipping puzzle pieces over in certain spots, with the explanation "sorry the sensors are not great, sometimes you have to just keep flipping certain pieces to make it work". We did the puzzle correctly but cheap equipment made it faulty. The biggest disappointment was on the final puzzle that was supposed to unlatch the escape door. We had it correct but nothing happened. So we tried thinking maybe we had to try again or something? We ran out of time fiddling with this thing. The lady came in and said we had 10 more minutes if we wanted. Spent the next 10 minutes trying to get the thing to work. Eventually when that time came up, she came in and said "well all you have to do is put this here, and that there..." Well she put it right back to the way we had it initially, and nothing happened. "hmm" she said. She then examined the pieces and physical magnets on the bottom of one piece was missing and was attached the magnet on the bottom of another piece. The magnets were not even glued on, so they can attached to whatever they want. Her response "well, that never would have worked... You must have touched the pieces together causing the magnet to move, so the sensor won't work if you do that and the magnets move." Huhh?? Once the door popped open, we left and she didn't even leave the room, or ask us what we thought, nothing. Just kept fiddling around in the room. No apologies, just an accusation that we must have had something to do with it not working. Long story short, we were the only people in the place, it was cheap sensors with faulty equipment, and the lady in charge just sat at the front watching a movie, which was all we could hear while inside the room because it was right next to her. Just a thrown together place trying to capitalize on the escape room trend with failed homemade...

Between the six of us that went and completed "The Tomb", we collectively agree that this was probably the cheapest-looking escape room we've ever been to. We're not huge on escape rooms. For most of us this was the second or third experience.

To begin, the theme was decent. We liked the story, but the aesthetics and execution was rather distasteful. A nicer word to describe the room would be "Minimalistic", because it had nothing except the puzzles. It just felt… empty…

The other problem we had with "The Tomb" was the balance of the puzzles. We went in a group of six, and there were only six puzzles to solve in total. Two of us were assigned to decipher the hieroglyphics, and the other four worked in pairs to solve the remaining puzzles. We completed everything else by the 30 minute mark, but the hieroglyphics took much longer. The rest us were just sorta sitting there in the dark room waiting for the last puzzle to be solved. (we couldn’t help much either because it was a cumulative effort written on paper. We couldn’t jump in mid-way to help with the translations)

I think a smaller group of four would have been better. People wouldn't have nothing to do like we did.

The puzzles were also very rudimentary. Kinda designed for kids. No hints were needed to complete the room. Once again, we're not escape room veterans. Just average adults in their late 20s.

Did we have fun? Yes. But The Room definitely leaves much...

Four of us did the Contestants and the Tomb...both had a success rate online of 25% and were the easiest listed online. Before we began the staff member said they had made the rooms tougher so they were like 15% now...ok. Why? The four of us have done escape rooms before but all agree that this was our least favourite place. Elements of puzzles were too long for no particular reason.. For example the puzzle in the contestants room was too large and the hieroglyphics took too long...we knew what to do but it just dragged out and was not enjoyable. There was no need for such a dark room in the tomb...again adding difficulty but not intellectually stimulating. The enjoyment of escape rooms is a balance of success at puzzles, difficulty and length of time an individual item takes when it is clear what is required. The balance wasn’t there. That combined with finding it hard to understand the unengaged staff member did nothing...