Outdoor Escape Room Where Dark Things Dwell — Attraction in Toronto

This "escape room" experience had a lot of potential, and it is apparent that whoever created it put a lot of thought into it, but you can tell it's one of those things where the brainstorming went on for way too long. They bragged about what a low success rate they had, but it is clear that this is because we go in blindly with no idea what to expect. At the end, they explained how the game was supposed to end, and we were shocked to find out there were an additional 3 additional segments of the game after we finished the first part. By the way, the first part of it is just picking up stuff from the buildings arbitrarily and then sitting down on the ground outside for the remainder of the time while you try to figure out the 10 puzzles - most importantly I want to stress the biggest flaw here is that the puzzles are not fun. It seems like a serious oversight that Secret City Adventures wouldn't consider that we should be having fun rather than sitting on the ground outside and trying to figure out what felt like an arbitrary pop quiz or an activity book you would get at a middle school scholastic book fair. We tried to meander over to the other side of the buildings where there were a bunch of benches and the actor told us we weren't allowed, and that we had to sit on the ground. It is seriously unfathomable that we were expected to sit outside on the ground for so long on our hands and knees. I suffer from scoliosis for which I just had an x-ray earlier that day and I was seriously sore and in pain, as would most adults after crawling around on the deck of a pioneer building for the better part of 90 minutes.

Overall the game was incredibly disorganized. The building doors are all locked upon arrival, you have to sit in a room at a bunch of tables with strangers waiting for instruction which made me feel like I was back in high school again in the worst way. The host kept making comments about how they were "over budget" which was extremely tasteless especially when we were paying close to $50 a person.

You would think that they would make use of the pioneer village and that the buildings would somehow be involved in the process of completing the puzzles, but not at all. Everyone has to go into each building, all as one big herd, and you simply pick up the item that is not hidden at all. There is one sitting there for each team. It was so odd that finding the pieces wasn't part of the game, they were just arbitrarily placed there for no reason at all and had no connection to the village.

The actors seemed to have no clue as to what was going on, one girl came over and told us we had less than 20 minutes to finish when it was 6:20 and the game ended at 7:00. Again, just another example of overall poor organization.

My friends and I are big fans of escape rooms and we have completed the majority of them within the city of Toronto, and this experience was hugely disappointing. To top it all off, we were forced to pay $10.50 for parking even though the place was technically closed and there was no one around, which seems really ridiculous, particularly after spending $150 for 3 people on this terribly disappointing experience. I had been considering some of the other Secret City Adventures but now I know to steer clear of them and I would recommend the same to anyone...

I'll be honest I've been putting off writing this review for about a month now, as I haven't desired reliving the disappointment this experience washed over me and my group. On July 9th my group of 6 including myself embarked on a highly anticipated adventure to Black Creek Pioneer Village for our yearly birthday party escape room experience. We all are big escape room connoisseurs and frequently enjoy visiting different rooms in the GTA and Halton region, but among the 20+ rooms and experiences we've gone to, this one had to be the worst. The only reason why I am giving it two stars is because my group and one actor from one of the rooms made it bearable. There are two slots for this game, a 6pm and a 9pm. I reckon as a two hour experience it can get tiring to rehearse the same lines and go over the same ground rules but the monotony and unenthusiastic approach that was given right from the beginning did not shine brightly in our group's eyes. As an escape host and seasonal scare-actress myself, I find that consistency in acting and immersion is key to making or breaking a guest's experience, and all but two actors that we were in contact with severely let us down. The entire game felt like holding kids on a tight leash and telling them what they cannot do, they hold your hand through puzzles which are pretty much only on paper and do not create an immersive environment with its large square footage area of use of the museum's grounds. The actors in our first room (the schoolhouse) belittled us and poked fun, putting our group down and distracting us from the puzzle solving, even going to the length of picking specific insults to direct to members of our group, saying things like taking a break for our chronically ill friend to take a pill wouldn't help "save their souls" any faster or make comments about how our group decided to divvy up the room's tasks. By incessantly interjecting they made communicating with our team difficult due to their constant seeming need to make unkind comments towards our escape room and puzzle skills, which, when competing against 9 other teams in a larger escape room adventure, feels highly unnecessary. Furthermore, the main actors who led the "townsfolk" in the act felt the need to YELL at groups if they weren't headed the right way or were not doing things in the typical sense that they expected of us, which also took a toll on the experience's immersion as it felt as though my adult group was being involuntarily hand held by the acting crew instead of supported and further immersed throughout the experience. There are so many ways these issues could have been handled, however they were not and for the steep price of nearly $50 per person, this two hour experience was a total waste of our time, took a negative toll on our energy and personal well-being and of course from a business perspective it totally shot down at our enthusiasm towards giving other Secret City adventures a try. If I knew that this was the negative experience we would have gotten at Where Dark Things Dwell, we would have saved our money and gone literally anywhere else. Such a waste for something that could have otherwise been...

I did the escape room at 6 pm with a group of 4. We have all done escape rooms before, and this was a unique experience. We were instantly immersed into the environment. The theme was spooky with the live actors, but not too scary at the same time. This outdoor escape room adventures involves going from building to building in Pioneer Village and solving different puzzles. When we did this, the puzzles did not involve interacting with village buildings at all. Rather you take the puzzle (e.g., a chalkboard) from the building, and then and solve it outside by sitting with you group on the bench or grass. You always have to be on the look out for "curses" (live actors) who try sneak up on you and spook you. There were around 10 different puzzles. Our group felt that solving all the puzzles within 90 minutes seemed very difficult. We should have split into 2 groups in the beginning. Regardless of where you are in the adventure, it ends after 90 minutes.

Overall, it is a fun and unique experience. If you are someone who prefer having a nice setting and atmosphere, then this is a great adventure. But if you are someone who mainly cares about solving dexterity puzzles and decoding locks, then this may not be...