Enter the Imaginarium Pittsburgh — Attraction in Harmar Township

Went here after playing several other local escape rooms. The Imaginarium tries to present itself as an 'experience', and to be honest, does a well enough job at projecting atmosphere, but 'hiding' the waiver forms or rules is just wasting time. The Escape Room itself was: Inventor's Paradox. Minor 'spoilers' (such that they are) lay ahead.

The theme was great, but I'm 100% not a fan of escape rooms that present a so-called mystery to be 'solved' (or not) in the time spent. Most puzzles I felt were quite good and different, but a few they served as simple time wasters rather than any real skill or thought (putting together a large puzzle with all parts present from the start of the room and navigating long hallways seperating the rooms comes to mind as time wasters.). One puzzle right at the start had a mechanic I'm not sure how anyone would realize you could even 'guess to try' let alone actually try due to the rule of thumb of "No Brute Physical Force." It was quite neat to see in action, though!

Our operator seemed a little too quick to give hints, but to be honest I don't care about that, especially because of the aforementioned puzzle above. The operator also seemed far, far too quick to correct mistakes rather than let you try and figure out why you were wrong.

One bad a puzzle was a Morse code machine because of course there is. (1 star off just for that insanely unoriginal 'puzzle') In particular, this machine just keep confusing one letter entered for another consistently. We knew the word, we knew how to enter it, the machine just wasted our time. We wasted about 5-7 minutes trying to do this one bloody simple-minded task. This was bad enough, but the operator, having already acknowledged that we got the correct word instead explain, slowly and piecemeal, to a group of experienced Escape Room patreons what Morse Code was and how a dash was longer than a dot, etc, etc.

By the time we finally got the machine to register the word we barely had any time left to explore the final(?) room and that left me feeling incredibly bitter and killed any fun I had with the rest of the room. Maybe we wouldn't have finished regardless, but that's hard to judge now and will serve as the #1 thing I remember about the entire experience.

And, finally, one more star off for leaving the mystery hanging after a failed attempt. Repeat escape rooms cannot be any fun, so just tell your audience the rest of your story, jeez. It also serves as a way to demonstrate the interesting puzzles and mechanics the players did not get to experience! Any time that happens, I'm just gonna assume there wasn't anything interesting and the rest was just a bunch of thoughtless tasks to waste player's time.

Anyway, tl;dr: I really wanted to like this particular Escape Room, the theme was fun, the atmosphere was fantastic, what I knew of the story was exactly my kind of thing, but a few conceptual and mechanical problems completely ruined...

Absolutely amazing! In a word: wow!

The Escape Room experience at Enter the Imaginarium is simply incredible. I had been to one other escape room at a different company, and Enter the Imaginarium's escape room is a far superior experience, outstripping the other on all accounts.

I was impressed, just in terms of scale: while the original escape room I went to was confined to one small room, the "Inventor's Paradox" experience at the Imaginarium was huge: just to get to the first room, you must wind your way through a series of corridors that introduce you to the story's themes. After my group solved the climactic puzzle of the first room, we triggered an opening to a second, even larger room with ever more engrossing puzzles.

The theming and set design was incredible. While the original escape room I went to was basically a linoleum-floored room scattered with some objects you could pick up, the Imaginarium really went all-out: every inch of the floors and walls were meticulously themed and designed--stepping into the Imaginarium really felt like you were transported to another world (or perhaps better, transported to another character's time and story). From the decor, to the antique and strange objects, to the contraptions, hidden doors, and other puzzle widgets you interact with, to the lighting--the Imaginarium really takes pride in their stagecraft, adding up to an escape room experience that truly deserves the term "immersive."

I took my sister there for her bachelorette party, and the whole wedding party thoroughly enjoyed the experience. My sister and I both really enjoyed puzzle games like "Myst" and "The Room" series, and Imaginarium gave us the opportunity to step inside of an experience like that. Even though our party didn't complete the entire escape room within the hour, we had a great time and were talking and reminiscing about it for long afterwards. I highly recommend this to anyone who wants to try a truly unique experience with some friends--this escape room...

Had the same exact experience as a previous the reviewer, Rob Richardson. His review sits a little further back, but he hits the nail on the head with everything.

In my experience, the most frustrating part was that the morse code machine was not working correctly even though we knew the correct answer. There was also another puzzle in the same exact room that we had found the code for but once we were plugging in the code to open the other door, it wasn't working. We asked for help numerous of times and the gamemaster kept giving the same exact clue for the correct code we were already plugging in. I believe that some of there equipment was faulty, or at least was when we went around a yr ago.

Rob also hit the nail on the head when he said that its frustrating that they don't tell you the answers at the end or what you were doing wrong. They do this because they want you to come back and try it again but nobody does that. In fact, because of this, it makes me want to come back less.The staff still staying in character even when you don't escape at the end is just plain frustrating.

Lastly, we gave this place the benefit of the doubt the first time with the Inventor's Paradox room, that we came back another time to try another room, and we escaped that room with about 20 minutes to spare because we made it out on accident, making our "win" not feel like an actual win. There was still a whole other room within the second one that we tried that we didn't even open the door to, but somehow accidentally escaped before we even made it to the end of the puzzle.

I wanted to like this place so bad but after two bad experiences there, I don't think we will be...