Lock and Key Escape Rooms — Attraction in Edina

After a long day of walking around (and practically living) at the Mall of America, we decided to rest up with a quick nap. When I woke up, it still felt early in the day, and I realized we hadn’t done an escape room yet—a must-do tradition on our vacations. So, my boyfriend and I started Googling and stumbled across Lock and Key Escape Room.

We checked out their room options online and landed on Impossible Mission. The location is inside the southdale mall, which was super convenient. Just a heads-up: although it says it’s near the food court, it’s actually located on the first floor, right below the food court area. Once we found it, we checked in and got our instructions.

As regular escape room players, we appreciated that the game master didn’t bog us down with unnecessary info. Directions were clear and to the point, and to our delight, no directional locks (those can really slow down the momentum). You get unlimited hints, though we tried to keep those to a minimum.

The room itself was a blast! There were a few puzzles that really stumped us, which we actually loved, so many rooms end up being too easy. We especially appreciated that this wasn’t a one-room experience, you move through three different rooms as you progressed, which kept things exciting and fresh.

Our Game Master was incredibly attentive and quick to respond whenever we had questions. Toward the end of the game, we had a misfire on one of the final steps. An item that was supposed to trigger just didn’t go off. With only 39 seconds left, we were definitely freaking out a bit! Thankfully, our Game Master paused the time, came into the room, manually opened the item for us, and then restarted the timer so we could finish properly. We completed the mission with just three seconds on the clock and walked out feeling like secret agents who had completed our mission and saved the world.

All in all, it was a fantastic experience. Challenging puzzles, great multi-room design, and excellent staff. Highly recommend if you’re in the area, especially for seasoned escape room fans looking for something fun and...

My spouse and I had a blast playing Impossible Mission! This was my 50th escape room and, despite all of that experience, I still felt sufficiently challenged and had an excellent time! The theming for the room was well done and made me miss the good old days of VHS rentals at Blockbuster and Hollywood Video.

I have two minor complaints (which obviously didn't have an impact on my star rating here):

1. My spouse and I are larger than average and not athletes at all. There is one challenge in this room that would be much better suited to skinnier and more agile individuals. Despite understanding exactly what we were supposed to do and making many attempts, we could not succeed and our game master had to come into the room to bypass the system. That made me feel a bit embarrassed and, for a few minutes, I stopped having fun. If you're a larger person or not that agile, I'd recommend telling your game master up front that you'd like them to let you through the physical part. Or even better, Lock and Key could find a way to fix this part of the experience so that the game master could bypass the system remotely or...?

2. There was a single white board stuck to a wall. The room is expansive, and we would have had a better time with either a mobile white board or multiple white boards. You are allowed to use your phone, so that's what I did to take some notes, but it'd just be a better experience if we could take notes in multiple places throughout the room.

Those two things aside, we had a great time and will definitely be back for both Utopia (which we actually already played at its old location in 2019) and Abandoned Carnival.

In summary, if you're debating between a night in streaming Netflix and spending some time escaping a video rental store at Impossible Mission, you should definitely opt for the latter. You'll have a whole lot more...

Update 2/22/23: I recently went to their new location at the Southdale mall. I've done both the Impossible Mission and the Utopia rooms. They were both fantastic. After doing the second room, we couldn't decide which one we liked more because they were both so good. Such great entertainment. Great activity for friends and family. And the staff are great as well! We are looking forward to going back again for the next room.

This was the third escape room I've done and by far the best. There were only a few people in our group that hadn't been to an escape room before, so although they had fun, they didn't know the difference. Those of us that have done them before were super impressed. The host can really make or break the experience and ours was very good; he helped us when we needed it without helping us too much and making it not fun. The room itself had lots of cool electronic type events; without giving anything away, it is the kind of thing where you pull a secret lever and suddenly something else in the room changes. Highly recommend it. The theme of our room was like an Indiana Jones type thing, but I know they have other rooms, so we will...