Boulder Escape Room — Attraction in Boulder

TLDR; Faulty equipment: Bad digital padlock and dead batteries to safe caused for 45/60 min waiting around unable to progress. Didn't get refund, instead, $10 coupons for next time... Never again.

So I booked myself and 5 friends to do their psycho killer room. To start the room off there was ONE clue and ONE padlock. We were able to figure out the clue in about 30 seconds and thought we had figured out the combination to the padlock. This was not a normal master lock though it was some weird digital padlock with four directional buttons. Having never used a lock like that one we thought we that we might just be clicking the buttons too hard or maybe we needed to hit the middle button when we were done. Nope. We tried what we thought was the correct combination SEVERAL times before trying to read the clue upside down, or in reverse because none of the combinations we entered worked. Oh and by the way, every few entries we made would lock us out from entering new combinations for 30 seconds or more. Finally, after yelling for help and getting a couple clues shoved under the door that basically told us what we already knew, the padlock magically worked. Guess what combination we used? Ya, the first one that we tried when we originally found the clue. I kid you not, we did not get past the first clue for 34 minutes. And since there was only that single clue to start the game off and we had searched the entire room we were all basically just twiddling our thumbs. So now we are down to 26 minutes and we can actually access the second area and more clues. We have some success but then get to the point where we need to enter 6 digits into a small safe (the kind you see in hotel rooms). We found the digits for the safe but instead of being able to breeze through, the safe wouldn't respond to input. After yelling to the game people that the safe wasn't working they stuffed a note under the door saying if you enter the wrong combo then you have to wait 5 min for it to reset. Except for the fact that it had been 20 min since anyone had touched the thing. Another 5 minutes go by and still nothing on the safe. FINALLY the game guy comes into the room and is looking at the safe and says "it must be out of batteries"... Seriously? While he was in there we told him to look at the padlock because it was obviously broken. Laughing he says "oh that is brand new. Plenty of people have been able to use it just fine". While saying this though he grabs it and tries to open it with the combination. "Oh... ummm. It was working fine earlier today..." Ya... So in total, we spent at least 45 minutes sitting around waiting on busted equipment. What a joke. He said he would give us and extra 5 min to make up for it. We eventually convinced him to give us 10. But it still didn't make up for the 45 that we lost. Afterwards he "tried" to make it better by offering us $10 off per person for the next time we come in. Uh, ya, no thanks. If I'm going to get my friends together again to blow $130 on something I'm definitely not going to do it here. Easily the worst escape room experience...

If you're looking for an escape room that involves logical and challenging puzzles, boulder escape rooms might disappoint. We did the captive room, but it took us a while to solve the clues. Not because it was hard, rather than a jumble of mess they put together. We finished with 20 ish minutes left, but were highly disappointed with quality. In past escape rooms we've done, they give you clues on a screen, but here, you have to knock on the door, which the game masters then would come and talk to you. Our game master was rude and seemed to act too good to be there on a Friday night. We also had to lead the conversation, to the point where we had to see our self's out after we escaped because they just looked at us after we got out. No asking how it was, telling us we did it, or even saying we're all good to go.

I would recommend going to an escape room in Longmont or superior. We've done some escape rooms in those areas and they have been great! If I'm paying a solid amount for an experience, I'd at least like it to be enjoyable rather than praying the room wont fall apart with the flimsy...

We did the Alien Abduction Room which was dominated by decrypting codes. Had this been my first escape room, I may have been okay with that. However, having done a few in Denver and fort collins I was expecting a lot more. I would have liked to have seen more "puzzles" (not just "find the ten thousand codes and put them into these cheap combination locks") and overall quality of props was very low, much lower than what I have seen in other companies. My group left feeling dissatisfied and with the ten thousand numbers and sequences running through our heads. Nothing in the room was original and felt like the creators of it watched a " How to make an Escape Room tutorial" on YouTube. Take the extra 45 minutes to go a decent one in Denver, you'll get your moneys worth and actually leave with something to talk about, like you should with all Escape Rooms.

Update: Owner contacted us, and was very interested in receiving feedback and improving their rooms, really hoping to make the experience better...