Locked Up - Fort Wayne | Escape Room Experience — Attraction in Fort Wayne

My group of 3 did two rooms on our first visit to Locked Up Fort Wayne. The first one, Antiviral, was AMAZING - super immersive, well paced, and quite challenging (we finished with 4 seconds left!). Our guide was also amazing, pausing for circumstances outside of our control and giving helpful clues when asked. I've done about 20 escape rooms now with different companies and this room was one of my absolute favorites.

The second room, however, The Forgotten, was AWFUL. This room should be rated a 10/10 on difficulty and only offered to groups of at least 4. There was absolutely no way for our group of 3 to successfully finish this room, which is really demoralizing to realize 15 minutes in. A good portion of the difficulty isn't even in the mental challenge of the puzzles, it's in the design of the room. I get wanting to be atmospheric and create a vibe, but when it's too dark to see the clues you're looking for (or the environment actively works against your goal, like correctly figuring out a color sequence when everything is bathed in red light and you can't tell the colors apart), it's incredibly frustrating. There is also a dexterous physical challenge in this room, which was practically impossible for our limited group to successfully navigate.

All in all, I likely will come back again to Locked Up Fort Wayne to try a few of their other rooms, as I was really impressed with Antiviral. However, I do think management needs to reconsider some of their room design choices and minimum player requirements. Our game guide for The Forgotten tried to make us feel better by telling us that "oh, most of the groups that try The Forgotten don't make it out, even bigger groups." That sounds an awful lot like a teacher who says "oh, most students who take this class fail it." Speaks to the need for reevaluation and redesign. After all, what's the fun in trying to beat the room if success is...

I had a chance to visit Locked Up in Fort Wayne with an event sponsored by my place of business and I was not disappointed.

I've only been to one other escape room establishment (in Noblesville) with my family with participants ranging from the age of 80 to 8 years old. In this case, it was different because our teams were constructed of co-workers of varying ages and skill sets. I have to say that the variety of rooms and the challenges involved in the rooms made this a very enjoyable experience. Every one of the team members whether they completed the room or not./ enjoyed the experience, had a good time, and would definitely be interested in returning.

The staff was able to handle a party of 20 to 25 people splitting us up into four teams in four different rooms. I happened to be part of the team who was able to solve the room and that was extra satisfying. The room that we were in had great puzzles that kept us engaged and searching for answers. The operators kept us moving at a steady pace.

I'd highly recommend this for a return visit or even a first visit for the escape...

I asked the group, and we would give it a 3.5 if we could. This was our 3rd escape room, so we came with a little to compare. The waiting area is huge and very nice. The person who helped us was also very nice. We chose the vault heist. The story is cute, and the decor of the room was ok. The flow of the game wasn't great. The game timer wouldn't go higher than 25 minutes, so it had to be reset twice and she just posted the time remaining. Not a huge deal, but it is so much easier to just be able to glance up than have to ask how much time is left. I don't want to ruin the game for anyone, so I am realizing as I type this out that I can't give much detail on other annoying parts. I'll just say that the reason I went down to 3 instead of up to 4 was the final lock. We had the code for some time, but we could not get it to work. It should not take that much effort to unlock something. It is super frustrating to have won the game in theory but have mechanical issues prevent you from...