Escapology Escape Rooms Downers Grove — Attraction in Downers Grove

I will start this review with a quote that I heard at this new escape room from the very friendly employee, Molly: "A name and love that will echo thru the ages."

When my party of three entered Escapology, we were greeted by the dashing, nay, RIVETING Molly. She began to ask me riddles three like, "Do you have a reservation? What is your name? And is this your first time here?" When I told her my name, there was a stillness in the air. The mood of the night swiftly shifted.

She told me, "Chuck, that's a strong name. Good name. Sturdy name, that's the kind of name you can build a house on. A name you can set your watch to." It boosted my confidence in just the way I like it before embarking on the quizzical trials of wit and tact that awaited me in the room.

She assured us all that clues were unlimited, so we needn't worry. She could sense our nerves. Everyone could. Nerves fill me with a most potent gas, which ended up causing a delay to the start of the challenge, as something had to escape me before I could do any escaping of my own.

30 minutes, three wipes, and three clues later (the beginning was hard!), we were off to the races. When we stepped into the escape room, a Batman themed challenge, we became instant Batmen, and set off to rise to the occasion. We swore to ourselves and to the radiant Gamemaster Molly that we would sooner be gunned down in the streets like Batman's own parents before using even a single clue.

We started the game...with a clue. We were lost from the very start. I won't give any hints or give away anything about the room, but everything in there worked great. We ended up beating it with seconds to spare.

We pressed the clue button accidentally a couple two, tree times, but completely defied the instructions given. We were gonna solve this thing OUR way. Tonight was about US. BATMAN asked US to solve THIS series of PUZZLES.

We soon became hungry. The half portion Peking Duck (don't recall which half) in my sleeve surely wasn't going to be enough to sate all our appetites, so I had to settle for scarfing down the whole half duck myself. At lease one of us would need to be fully nourished to handle what was in store.

As we won the game, with practically NO CLUES mind you, the wonderful employees asked us if we wanted our picture taken for their wall of fame! I asked, "Who else is on this wall?" They said it's their own personal walls our pictures would go on! We were made to be heroes. Marching band fanfare blared through speakers and balloons fell from the roof, spelling out our names on the floor.

I will be back...

Edit: How a company responds to criticism says a lot. Just minutes after I posted my initial review, the company reached out via phone and text to sincerely apologize for our experience. They were very professional and offered us a chance to try another room, if we were willing.

A couple of weeks later, we took them up on the offer, and I’m glad we did. Our second visit was much more enjoyable. The staff was attentive, and when a trap door didn’t open properly, they immediately let us know it should have and gave us a heads-up that it might need a gentle tap. It was a small gesture, but it made a big difference in keeping the game flowing smoothly.

The rooms here are very well themed, and the Scooby-Doo room was especially fun for my 5 year old as he was actually able to help solve a few puzzles, which made him feel really included!

Thank you for turning our disappointing first visit into a great experience. My son now can’t wait to come back and do another room!

Review: My biggest pet peeve in an escape room is when something is broken. We spent at least 20 minutes on something that was broken (not by us). Finally we asked for a clue but were so confused on what happened that it threw us completely off and just soured the whole experience as they didn’t even tell us that yes, what we did was right, but was not working, so we were just stumbling around trying to figure out how we got to where we were and what was next. Afterwards we asked how we should have gotten the answer and that’s when they noticed it was broken. Not escaping sucks when it’s your fault, but makes you want to try another room to prove a point to yourself, but when it’s due to company error it makes the whole experience sour and disappointing and makes you not want to play there again….especially when they do nothing to compensate the mistake and just offer you a “oh sorry the previous group must have broken it” and a general replay code given...

The 3 rating is specifically for going with a group of 8 people.

Short summary: We did the Scooby-Do Escape room. The problems are very linear, and that means that 4-5 people are completely idle at almost all points in time. You should/could do the room with 2-3 people, maybe 4 max.

More details.

The location is clean. The workers are nice. The rooms are very nicely arranged, with screens, cool activated doors, etc. (Almost) every puzzle was clear on what to solve, and we just had to pull together the pieces. If anything, it was easier than expected.

Issues we ran into:

The main one which annoys me is that everything is linear. Solve A, you get puzzle piece B. Solve B, you get C. I don't think at any point (I might be forgetting one thing? Maybe?) we had more than one puzzle to solve. So it's very hard for a large group to do anything. It felt loud and crowded, and many people felt frustrated because they couldn't participate.

The colors were off on the pipes. "Yellow" and "Green" and "Purple" absolutely didn't look right. I think the lighting is a bit strange in there, so the paint colors simply don't work. It made a puzzle unnecessarily confusing because we kept arguing about what color some paint was. Probably should just get that fixed. I don't think that was a purposeful part of the challenge.

I think one puzzle door didn't work. We were confused about why we were missing one puzzle piece, and then the gamemaster said "Hey, you did do X right?" and we said yeah. And then a door opened. I think the door had just malfunctioned. Not a huge deal, but it was a bit odd.

My main issue is that I paid full price for 8 people, but only 3-4 of us at any point were "participating". If you charged everyone over 3 less (because you'd recognize that they'll be bored), maybe that'd be more fair. But I don't think any group of more than 4 people should ever pay for a...