Escape Room Zone — Attraction in Farmington

Update 3/7/2018: Shawn (Sean?, Shaun?), the manager, reached out to our group shortly after our negative experience and wanted to make it right. He invited us back out to try the Mad Scientist room. Shawn greeted our party and took us back to the room. He explained they were trying a new "tracking system" to help the game runner know where we were and where we could possibly be stuck. It was a board that allowed the players to hang the keys up as you went along. The game monitor could easily reference the tracking system from the camera view to give better clues. I'm still not sold on the walkie talkie communication, but I think with the new tracking system it could help the game monitors.

The room was set up properly and had a decent theme. The monitor was working and allowed us to know exactly how much time we had left to get out of the room. Both were a big step up from our previous experience. One of the other things I noticed about this room, was it allowed for more clues to be gathered throughout the game that you didn't necessarily need right away. This helped everyone from an engagement standpoint.

After we escaped, Shawn gave us a peek into a couple of the new rooms and they look amazing. We are definitely looking at returning after this experience. Thank you, Shawn for letting us have this opportunity to change our minds.

2/18/2018: My first impression walking in the door was a very positive one. The decor of the different rooms gave a very cool visual as you walked in. The best times for each of the rooms were displayed on a TV, which gave a sense of the difficulty of each room. I've been to three different escape room locations and this had the best lobby, by far. I thought that the high price tag of $30 was going to be worth it; I was wrong.

We chose the Trapped in a Jurassic World room and when we entered the room, the room seemed "cheap" compared to the other escape rooms I have done. We also noticed a key on the ground. Someone had not reset the room properly. There was a monitor in the room, where I assumed the timer was supposed to be displayed, but was not working. In other escape rooms I have done, the monitor was very useful, because not only did it show the time remaining, it allowed the people running the game to provide hints. The guy running the room said we would have to use the provided walkie talkie to ask for the time remaining and ask for any hints if we got stuck. Not ideal.

As the guy running the game left, he pointed out that we should start with a certain puzzle. After completing the puzzle, nothing happened, so we tried multiple times to see if we were just missing something. We couldn't figure out what happened, so we moved to another puzzle. After we competed the room, we learned there was another part of the room that was not reset properly, which is why nothing happened after completing the first puzzle.

Later, we completed another puzzle that didn't trigger a key dropping. After asking for a "hint" on the walkie talkie, we were told that we had done everything right, but had to reach up and pull a key down that didn't release. Using the walkie talkie also made me realize that there weren't any cameras in the room that allowed the game runner to watch what we were doing or know how far we had progressed.

The other thing I noticed is the room seemed very linear. There wasn't a whole lot of activities or puzzles that could be completed concurrently. Which can be a big negative with a lot of people in the room.

My overall experience was not great, especially for someone that has been to other escape rooms where the production of the escape rooms are much better (including multiple rooms and secret doors) and the price point is lower. I won't be going back to this location unless something is done to change the value, i.e. price point or production...

After a few days of processing our experience…

Room was fun. Gamemaster was awful.

Started off our experience walking in and immediately put in a spot where we were uncomfortable. Jamie - our Gamemaster told us that no matter what, he would be taking everything from us before we went in the room. Phones, keys, wallets, even watches (THAT WERENT SMART WATCHES). Seriously? When I expressed that our entire group had babysitters back home and will not be handing over our phones and car keys, I was met with two responses…

“It’s in the waiver” and “well if you don’t trust your babysitters, they probably shouldn’t be watching your kids”

that alone should have made us turn around and walk out, but reluctantly we decided to give our stuff over.

Even after we had just watched him and the other girl behind the counter walk out for a smoke break while our group was preparing for our room. Makes us feel real positive that our stuff will be safe and secure while we’re in our room since we watched them just put our stuff in a bin and simply behind the counter.

This was all BEFORE we ever went into the room. As we started, I get being in character but having side comment after side comment towards us had us uneasy and felt unsafe as you take us 1 by 1 blindfolded and cuffed into different rooms. Had our experience been different leading up to this point, our feelings would have been excitement but at this point we were annoyed and already on edge. To top it off wracking the cuffs on as tight as possible isn’t necessary. I appreciate the full experience but I’m not looking to bruises and scuffs on my wrists because some college kid thinks he’s all that.

Mind you - we hadn’t even started our room yet. Eventually, the room turned out to be great. Challenging and tough, was great. Mainly because we didn’t have to engage with our Gamemaster until we needed clues.

We weren’t there to go for any record. We were there to have fun but yet again Jamie was there to remind us it was our his experience rather than our own. After using our first 3 clues, we were told we needed to pay $20 for another clue. After responded with haha, very funny but seriously give us another clue…yet Jamie remained radio silent. And we don’t get another clue. Essentially rendering our last 10 minutes as not being able to do anything.

Let me remind you of their own policy: “In order to participate in the best record time, groups are provided with three clues. Staff will provide unlimited clues for guests not attempting the record time.”

Overall, it was an awful experience. I’ve done countless of escape rooms and have had great experiences with great Gamemasters. What’s unfortunate is when a group of parents leave their kids at own in hopes of a fun night out, spends a couple hundred bucks for what we thought could be fun experience simply to be met by Jamie: the Gamemaster that cared more about his own experience and image than our experience as their customer.

We won’t...

Fun escape room and all, but there were definitely some things that make me question coming back.

First off, there was no lighting. We did the temple run room, and I know that technically there wouldn't be much industrial type lighting in this temple, but put some torches out or something. We would never have found certain clues through out the entire room had we not had our phones on us. This includes words in pitch black passages written in black ink that were next to impossible to find, even with our phones, that could've been at least seen if there were some kind of, I don't know, torch? Or some kind of light, any kind of light, to illuminate it. Switches, which took us quite a bit of time to find, even with our phone flash lights, we ended up needing to use one of our hints just to tell us where the button was. Key puzzle details hidden in shadow just out of sight. Every piece of this imperative for the room but so impossible to see. I dont even want to think about what would've happened if we'd used our hints on anything other than just finding these hidden things or bringing our phones in. At first I was surprised they let us have our phones, most good places won't, but now its clear that they want you to have them, if for no other reason than to use the flashlight.

There was a puzzle that wasn't set properly at all. We were given 4 pieces, each with symbols that related to numbers that had to be translated and used to unlock a box. We translated the symbols and got the code 634. Incorrect. We must have spent 15 minutes decoding and getting the exact same answer before simply plugging and and chugging through it. Eventually we got the right answer as 613. We went through the symbols again and nowhere on the decoded pieces was the symbols to get the number 1. We spent about 5 more minutes trying to figure out what we did wrong before deciding to just move on and finish the room.

Overall we did have fun, but if the staff actually took the time to construct and properly change over each room it could be a LOT better...