MISH MASH Adventures — Attraction in Aurora

I really love the concept of this place. A warehouse space that has a long corridor snaking through. An on either side of your route are doors you can enter that offer their own specific challenge - be it physical, logical, or some combination of the two. If you can't beat the room, you can leave and re-enter and try again. Staff is super kind and helpful and ready to answer questions, and let you out of a room when you get stuck inside.

As an escape room fan - this ISN'T an escape room, but the physical and mental challenges I could definitely see being in some aspect of an escape room. While escape room is mostly mental, there are definitely some physical challenges that may prove difficult or taking. Most rooms depend on actual physical teamwork, which is very different from escape rooms. You need to be in some decent shape for some of the challenges here. Which is awesome and was fun to do (but there's definitely a few my out-of-shape butt couldn't do. :)

Overall , I love that each room has it's own theme and a challenge specific to that room only. And some definite thought went into the design of each room - it seems like the ideas are there, but the budget for wowing the customers and making the place be amazing is lacking. I feel like it could have used some beta testing.

But, here's what I think needs to be improved upon: Communication. In most rooms, there's some riddled instructions to guide you, but some are very vague (or have basic typos). Ex: in the pool room, I wasn't aware that all parties had to hit their buttons simultaneously to "beat" the room until I spoke to staff. Easily fixed with a message on the room instruction panel. General upkeep. Some rooms look amazing (Chapel) but others look like they were slapped together. In the library, I pushed, pulled, spun, lifted the correct book for over a minute until I triggered some response. Safety: In the soccer room, I started rolling the balls instead of kicking them because I was concerned of cracking my ankle on the steel frame, and then I managed to jam my fingers when I hit the frame. Some simple padding on there would do wonders. My son hurt his leg trying to climb up to a lookout in another room. Again. Little bit of padding goes a long way. Repeat business: There's maybe 12-15 rooms. 2-3 were not open/working/built. Why am I coming back? Do rooms switch out?

Here's your million dollar idea: Players get a card, it allows them access to a room and records your score with a points-based system on time/difficulty/count etc. This allows for a competitive edge, and a personal goal to best on your return visit. You can have a leaderboard for 2-person, 3-person, etc teams as well (just like escape rooms).

It's definitely worth checking out, but some of the physical challenges don't necessarily keep the safety of the player in mind. I think these rooms are best played with 2-4 people. There is some amazing potential here, so I hope they can up their budget a bit and spend some $$ on sprucing a few things up and making the rooms safer for its customers.

I'll be back for...

Mish Mash has a really strong concept that needs further development and serious customer service training before they can consider charging what they do for the "experience."

Registering for the event: I had JUST bought a groupon and the Mish Mash site didn't recognize the voucher code immediately. I called to make the appointment instead and was told they couldn't take a Groupon appointment over the phone and that it may be expired (mind you, I opened the conversation saying I had JUST PURCHASED the Groupon.) They said they were "booking up " for the night and suggested we come at 4, which was way earlier than I had intended on going. I waited 30 minutes and tried again and was able to book online without issue.

Signing in was a TERRIBLE experience. The online waivers that arrived with my confirmation wouldn't work, so I figured we'd just fill out forms that were there and arrived early to do so. Nope, they pointed at a QR code and rudely stated we needed to fill out forms. QR code got me to a form for myself and sent me an email to finalize, which I was told I didn't need to do. I tried to explain that I hadn't signed forms specifivally for the kids I was with, but was told I had everything. THEN was told the kids weren't signed in. THEN the QR code wouldn't let me sign in again, so (rude again) was told I could use the ipad and that "You HAVE to sign a waiver to play " as if I weren't trying to do this already for the last 10 minutes. Then kids' registrations went through, but THEN I was told mine wasn't valid. I told them I had the email confirmation and they said it didn't matter, THEY didn't have it (as if I could somehow solve this or was at fault.)

The rooms: Confusing and non-functioning. While it's one thing to solve a timed challenge, it's another entirely to have to figure out what the heck the challenge IS before you try to solve it. While you have "unlikmited tries" to get it right, it completely takes away from the expereince.

This needs to be improved with a combination of the following suggestions: more time to figure out what the heck you're supposed to do to solve the challenge; a reset button that does not involve you hitting a button to exit, then reentering your code and wasting time starting all over again; a number of tries for certain challenges before ending the challenge; instructions regarding what the challenge actually IS and how you will win.

Many rooms needed to be reset to work at all and others didn't score things properly.

We lost so many challenges without understanding how we could of won them, and won others without any idea how we did it. "Luck" was not the expereince we were looking for. Kids just threw up their hands and wanted to go to the next room. The teens, who were incredibly excited initially, stopped trying 10 full minutes before our official end.

Oh, and that comment about "booking up for the night" ? We didn't see or hear another team in the entire two hours...

The short version of my review is that Mish Mash is a cool concept for a team-building multi-room puzzle game, but most of it requires physical fitness beyond average ability and isn't worth the cost if you don't know that going in.

Now for the long version:

Came here for the first time yesterday and left frustrated and disappointed. The most information I had going in was that it "wasn't an escape room." They do take walk-ins, but I had no idea that wasn't the norm and they preferred people making appointments in advance. That would've been useful information to know!!

Each room at Mish Mash had a screen that would give you hints to solve puzzles, which could be physical or mental. You can do as many rooms as you like, and when you have to bail there's an emergency button that lets you out. It's a cool idea, and sounded like fun! The problem for me was most rooms were physical challenges and there was no way to know what was in a room until you entered it.

The physical challenges included rock climbing, spider jumping up a wall, diving into a pool of yoga balls over a concrete floor, crawling on said concrete floor, climbing up a series of tall shelves, and throwing tennis balls into a tiny hole on the other wall through a jail cell.

The non-physical challenges included a bookshelf puzzle, trivia, an Indiana Jones floor tile game, and a game that had something to do with a table full of ping pong balls and sensors on the walls. The difficulty settings changed nothing, it seemed, and some were straight-up just broken (unresponsive or showing error messages.)

Now I could sit here and describe everything that went wrong, but the main point is the world isn't designed for fat or disabled people. I usually expect that kind of embarrassment and disappointment, I just didn't expect it here. Mish Mash is less of a team-building puzzle place and more of a place to show off that you can climb a wall or aim a tennis ball with perfect accuracy. If you can't do that for whatever reason, find someplace else to blow $50. You'll probably have a better...