Time to Escape: the Escape Room Experience — Attraction in Chattanooga

Solid facility with two rooms and more on the way.

Time to Escape is getting a facelift. They used to be Quest to Escape, which is still on some signs and marketing materials, so know that the two are one in the same. They are definitely upping their game with new rooms in progress. Their current rooms, Sabatoge and Locker Room Lockdown, provide a fun experience with some creative twists.

We walked in on a Monday afternoon and were greeted by the friendly and helpful Eric who helped us schedule both rooms with just the two of us playing. We always appreciate this, but remind everyone that this should by no means be expected. Paid street parking was available and there is a small lot next to the facility. There’s a small but welcoming lobby with merch and water available with puzzles to play while you wait.

Both rooms had solid production and puzzle design. Both rooms are family friendly, though may pose some challenges to those who are physically limited – check with the gamemasters before booking. Overall, gamemasters Eric and Maggie were helpful, enthusiastic, and seemed to really enjoy what we do, which we always love to see.

Our first room was Sabatoge, which required four hints and we didn’t technically escape because in our final puzzle (which unlocked the door) we had two tiles switched as our time ran out. But, we got to experience the entire room, so that’s a win. The room is train/spy themed, which is a lot of fun. We had some puzzle issues: There was a heavy reliance on jigsaw style puzzles which got a little old, we feel they may have over-complicated a crypto puzzle, and there could be improvements in the order clues are discovered – it’s frustrating to find clues early on that aren’t used until much, much later. Despite these critiques, this room is still solid overall and worth a go.

Time to Escape’s best room by far is Locker Room Lockdown. They did something we have never seen before: One person, the coach, is locked in a cage for most of the game with his/her own puzzles to solve and some puzzles which require teamwork. This was a very fun challenge! Note that with two people, your “not-coach” is going to have a LOT to do on their own, so it’s best to choose that person who runs around like crazy for this role (in our case, Jules) and your deep-thinker for the coach (Chris). The only confusion we had was on the very last clue, and it turns out our gamemasters had switched out mid-game so our new one wasn’t entirely sure where we were. We lost a few minutes on that but no big deal, we escaped with time to spare having genuinely enjoyed the room.

As they undergo their upgrade, Time to Escape could easily become a five-star facility in the near future. In the meantime they are still very much worth a visit, especially for Locker Room Lockdown.

The...

Unfortunately not a very good experience because of technical difficulties and also the staff not being very polite. Would not recommend if English is not your first language. I don't usually have trouble understanding because I've been living in the US for a while, but the guy who was explaining everything to us talked very fast and when I asked him politely to talk slower for me he rolled his eyes and started talking slower but a little bit sarcastic. He only talked slower that time, but then he talked fast again when using the walkie talkie, so I wasn't able to understand anything. Glad I had my American husband who had to explain everything to me. Now we did the Secret Agent room and it had several technical issues, like for one clue we had to make a call, we tried several times and it never worked. They gave us more time after they realized, but it was still kinda disappointing. Another technical issue, one of the boxes was missing an item. We spent a lot of time (40ish minutes) trying to figure out how to get me out of the cell, so when we called the staff to tell them about it and ask if the missing item had something to do with not being able to open my cell, they said they told us that before starting the game and that they told us we would have to use the "emergency exit button" which we don't remember and honestly we would have never pushed that button because we would have thought it was only for a real emergency exit. Labeling something as emergency exit and using it as a way to open the cell was kinda tricky. There were some other clues or things that were not exactly technical issues but more like really impossible to figure out on your own. We love doing escape rooms so we have experience, and we knew this was a hard difficulty one but to us it was disappointing instead of hard...

I had high hopes for this room as it was recommended to us by another enthusiast, however it fell way short of the stellar mark. We played locker room lockdown and while the the theme was unique, the execution was sorely lacking. Some of the puzzles are a reach to figure out. Others had an almost impossible timing mechanism that wasted several precious minutes due to its sensitivity. Then to top it all off, we encountered a reset issue that had we not addressed it, we would have never been able to escape. The game master triggered it manually after helping us look for said clue in the room. It was later found locked in something that was impossible to unlock without what we needed in the first place. It was incredibly frustrating and messed up the flow of our game immensely. Irrelevant to the game was their parking....or better yet lack thereof. There was one spot designated to another company that was currently closed down that was available for parking. In conclusion, the effort to produce a decent escape room was there (hence 2 stars instead of one) but it most certainly was NOT worth the $63 we paid to play one game for 2 people. There are other much better games in the area that are worth...