The Great Escape Room Chicago — Attraction in Chicago

As a family, we are escape room veterans. It's pretty typical for us whenever we travel to find at least one ER to try. This time, we brought a first-timer with us as well for a full group of 7 (the room we picked could take up to 10).

We chose the Colosseum, which has something of a unique set-up, but it boasts being a 120-minute room.

First off, this was BY FAR, the most we've ever paid for an escape room. We've done longer rooms before, so of course, it's expected to be more, but we could have done two full ERs at another location for basically the same price. So our hopes were high.

In general, the room didn't disappoint. The puzzles were fun and in-depth, but entirely accessible and doable. There were a few times when we fumbled into something we shouldn't have, but that happens. Our son said that the gamemaster was one of the best ones we've had, and I tend to agree.

Without giving anything away (as they tell you to pay attention to them), this room uses audio clues. Especially when you have 9 people in a small space talking with one another, it was kind of difficult to hear these clues sometimes, and certainly difficult to keep them straight in your mind in addition to the other things in the room. Thankfully, it seemed that at least one person heard enough of it to get by, but there were times when we needed the GM to walk us through those clues a bit simply because we didn't have the chance to revisit them ourselves. :/

Beyond that, there were a few major frustrations. I was worried about the set-up of the room given the description, as it made it SOUND like paying for a two-hour ER could potentially be ended in 30-minutes, which would have been a rip-off beyond measure. So I called ahead to ask, and I was happy to hear that wasn't the case, so perhaps the website description needs some work to make that clearer.

While on that call though, I asked about the fact that their rooms aren't private, meaning that you could get put in with strangers, something we're generally not thrilled about, especially because we do rooms with our children, and I have no idea the state of people who might be doing the rooms with us. The fact that someone has to pay $50 to make a room private, when that's kind of become industry standard (at least in our experience) at this point felt like a cash grab. BUT I was told on the phone by an employee that whenever a party books a room with 6 or more players, the system AUTOMATICALLY books it as private at no extra cost. So we went ahead with the reservation, happy with that outcome ...

... only to show up and find that another couple had been booked into our room with us.

Now they were a very nice young couple, we worked together well, and I think everyone had a good time. We had no issues with them, and our kids even worked together with them on some puzzles. All in all, it was a good experience. But going into it, we were very frustrated by the surprise on what we'd been looking forward to as a fun end on a somewhat stressful day.

All that being said, considering the expense of the rooms (including SPECIAL Chicago taxes for such things), the exorbitant price of parking, etc., I'm not sure I can say that we'd be back to Great Escape Room. But that should say nothing of the quality of...

EDIT* from 1 STAR to 5 STAR: So I am editing my review and completely changing my rating, because I am convinced that our experience was a one time occurrence!! After writing my review, you can see there was a reply with an apology with the company reaching out and asking us to contact them regarding our experience. They didn't not argue or squabble over the review or what was said. They sincerely apologized for the experience and they not only FULLY REFUNDED the game we paid for without us asking, but they offered for us to come BACK also for free to give them another chance at getting it right!! This is the best customer service I have ever experienced, am certain that it was a one off experience, and if I go back to Chicago would 100% give this company another try. I am leaving my original post for anyone to see, but I am very happy with the end result of my interaction with the Great Escape Room Chicago!

I am very sad to write this review! My wife and I are big escape game fans and have done over 40 escape games. My wife gifted me Escape the Colosseum for Christmas. This is the most we have ever paid for an escape room before, so we had high hopes. During the game, they had to come in and reset things for boxes to open how they are supposed to (I understand things like that happen, but in combination with everything else, really?!) Many of the props and decor feel homemade, but we did not have a good experience mainly because the links or connections to the clues were extremely far fetched and didn't make logical sense, the game master was not paying attention (when asking for a clue, they would ask "what do you need help with?" I don't know, that's why I am asking for a clue) and when we said that the clue we were given didn't make sense, the game master would just repeat what he said the previous time (*worth noting clues are unlimited 🤷‍♂️). I really wish I could get a refund, because this escape game was more frustrating than it was fun, and the whole point of paying for an escape game is that it is supposed to be a fun experience. I have played $15 escape games that I enjoyed much more than this particular game. So sad this was such a...

We've done a lot of escape rooms (about 35), and this was just OK. Escape the Colliseum wasn't the worst we've ever done, but it wasn't great either. First, it was dark to set the mood. That's fine, but things were hard to see. We were able to use our phone flashlights, but it was hard to really take in everything. In one of the rooms, you had to pay attention to where an item came from. That's tough if you've got multiple people in the room looking at things and sharing. If something needs to be associated with a certain spot, there should a way to always associate it with that location or make it permanently attached. After the game was over, the guide told us a lot of people have trouble with the second room. If most people have trouble with it, then maybe the room should be re-evaluated and improvements should be made so people can enjoy it more. The sound quality through the speakers wasn't great. We had a hard time understanding the guide sometimes when he spoke and we all thought the recordings seemed muffled. We also had some issues with things that had to be lined up just perfectly. The dark room didn't help with this. There were a few puzzles we thought were pretty good, but we didn't leave with the "Wow, that was really cool" feeling that we often do with escape rooms. We considered taking advantage of their special, which allowed us to get a discounted ticket to return for a future room, but there was no one sitting at the desk when we left. And since our experience was lackluster, we all just kind of silently decided we probably shouldn't invest any more money...