Secret City @ Casa Loma — Attraction in Toronto

I don't dispute that this experience may be enjoyable for others, but it was not for me. I'll try in this review to reveal the elements that were not up to my expectations and hopefully this will help readers decide whether it's for them.

My party did The Dragon's Song escape at Casa Loma. This experience included two live actors who were with you in the room the entire time, and 'guided' the experience. When I say guided, what i mean was that they interfered with puzzle solvers, and would practically solve the puzzles for some people. This would be lovely if I had signed up for dinner theatre. The actors obviously were enthusiastic and talented, however when I sign up for a room escape, I would rather fail than have my hand held. This is poor design.

We had a party of six, and the rooms are designed for more, so other players are thrust together with you into a team. In this room, at the beginning of each level of the tower, four puzzles were available at a time, and worked mostly independently of one another. In my eyes, this created two problems, which only existed to try solve the problem of trying to fit too many players into the room at once in order to drive higher profitability. When I go to a room escape, I would like to be aware of the puzzles my team has worked through, and develop some understanding of how they worked and what needed to be done to solve them, even if I was not a major contributor to that particular puzzle. When 4 puzzles are being solved independently, the individual player is unlikely to be even able to see how each works, let alone contribute in any meaningful way to the majority of puzzles. When most of the puzzles are solved in a level the players who are not working on the final puzzle have two options, to politely wait around for the last group working on it to have some success, or for a dozen or more people to crowd around and catch up on what's been going on.

Lastly, at the beginning of the game, a Game Master (or MC as they called them) specifically instructed the group that there would be no clues on the walls. Normally, revealing the inner workings of a clue in an escape game online would be against my sacred code, however, in this game, there was a clue that was on a loose brick in the wall. While the instructions given may have meant to communicate that graffiti on the walls would not contain written clues, the MC instructed players (repeatedly) that 'there will be no clues on the walls.' Please train your staff as our team wasted a lot of time at this stage, mainly due to these incorrect instructions.

The decor and theme were impeccable, and there was a lot of attention to detail in props, you can tell that the designers took great care to design an aesthetically pleasing and immersive experience.

In conclusion, if you are looking for an active, participatory experience, and are tired of things like the medieval times, this may be a wonderful activity for you and your group. If you are an experienced and driven escape gamer, I would advise looking at...

They canceled our prepaid booking due to weather (completely understandable) and asked us to contact them to reschedule or get a refund (also reasonable). However, it’s impossible to get ahold of them by phone or email. I have called about 8 times and sent 2 emails with no response.

The booking was part of a birthday celebration and someone took time off to fly into Toronto so the cancellation was definitely disappointing but not their fault. To then not be able to reschedule or even contact anyone IS their fault though.

I don’t like leaving reviews for things that are one offs and not necessarily representative of the service provided. I will remove/edit this review when/if I am contacted by...

While the actual room was beautiful, we had concerns with their booking and management. We specifically booked an escape room in the actual Castle Loma site. We're from the Niagara area and planned a stay over in TO specifically for this attraction. Our booking was cancelled due to low numbers (which is fine, it's in there fine print), but when offered a spot in the Murdoch escape game we weren't told it was in a different building. It would have been nice to know as this was why we booked. Management didn't empathize or offer any solutions to make...