Mission Escape Games — Attraction in Anaheim

tl;dr My family of four had a great time with all the escape rooms. Decor in the rooms and the puzzles were well done and the customer service was great!

My wife, two kids (8 and 11), and I did two escape rooms for the first time here in Anaheim, the Hydeout and the Bank Heist, in that order. We loved them so much, we did the other two the next day, Darkest Hour and End of Days. They have four rooms total. Our game masters, Julia and Joel, were both great, friendly, and answered all my kid’s questions :) All escape rooms were fun and well done! In my opinion, the Bank Heist had the easiest puzzles and End of Days had the most challenging. End of days also has more puzzles that were shape/pattern focused, while the others were more number and letter based. The horror-themed one, Darkest Hour, has very little light in the room, which is appropriate for the theme, but that made it more challenging to solve some puzzles, even though they were pretty clever. Only my wife and I did Darkest Hour, while the kids waited in the lobby. That was too intense for them. Afterwards, my kids said they heard their mom scream from the lobby, lol. Out of all the rooms though, the Hydeout was my favorite! I loved the decor, the puzzles, the theme, and the overall ambiance. Staff monitor your group through cameras throughout the room and give you clues, when you ask for them. Clues show up on the same tv in the room that displays your remaining time. You have one hour to complete each room. Participants need to arrive about 20-30 min early to sign waivers and go over rules. This was a great time overall though and I definitely recommend it. Plus, they were working on a FIFTH room while we were there, estimated to be ready by summer 2025. My family and I are now hooked and plan to try other escape rooms done by...

I did the End of Days room with my son. It was incredibly frustrating for many reasons.

1. They separate the rooms with a small metal slide that you have to keep going up and down between. You have to go under a 4 foot tall metal bar while going to the metal slide. When you're 6'3" this is hell.

2. They tell you before starting the game that there are many distractions and not everything is important. When you get in the game they give you around 15 objects to figure out what to do with. This gets worse later in the game with more objects. Not to mention the 20 things on the wall to figure out what's important to focus on.

3. They have this horrible are where you have to sit on the floor and put your hands in these massive gloves (full of other people's hand funk 🤮🤢🤮). You then have to plug electrical plugs into outlets. They're broken and the plugs kept falling out. This is a complete garbage concept.

4. They sell the room saying that it's good for 2-8 players. Once we got out, the attendant told us that it's a significant disadvantage with only two players. They shouldn't advertise as being completable with 2 people. We left the game early in frustration.

I've done 4 escape rooms total and this was the most frustrating one I've ever done. The way they force you to run between rooms and scramble is super frustrating. Every other escape room I've done has each room you enter isolated or there are very limited interactions between the two.

Overall 1/5. There's plenty of other actually fun escape rooms to do...

Best Birthday Ever (and also mild trauma, but in a fun way)

This was our second time at Mission Escape Games, and once again, they successfully trapped my son's birthday party crew in a room for an hour — so, basically parenting WIN.

We did The Darkest Hour, which was appropriately spooky but still teenager-friendly (no actual therapy needed afterward... probably). The storyline was solid, the puzzles were clever, and most importantly, Lee was an escape room wizard. Upon learning it was my son's 16th birthday, Lee went full birthday ninja and snuck his name onto a BLOODY FRIDGE — which is honestly the coolest and most disturbing gift he’s received to date. She even gave him a special task during the room, making him feel like the chosen one (and probably insufferable to his friends for a week).

Massive shoutout also to Joel, who hosted last year’s party for Operation: End of Days — hands down the best escape room we’ve ever done. UNDISUPUTED. Joel is 98% of the reason my son wanted to come back this year (the other 2% was probably the idea of locking his friends in a room and bossing them around for an hour).

Pro Tip: Keep your party crew to 6 people max for optimal puzzling. Any more, and someone’s going to be stuck in the corner pretending they know how to open a lock.

We can’t wait to come back and get trapped all over again. Thank you for making my now 16-year-old feel like a horror movie...