Escape Room Pittsburgh (Homestead) — Attraction in Homestead

Staff were awesome and helpful! Chill environment. Puzzles provided in the waiting room / lobby were challenging and a good way to spend time while you waited to start your game. Note to self: the waivers to sign at the front desk (electronically) require you to type in each persons info individually and keep redoing for each person in the group. #FacePalm lol.

We went as a family of 5 (ages 9, 12, 14, 32, 34) and did the generation 2 "Subway Escape" room. This was our first time with a generation 2 room (only having done "lock and key" generation 1 rooms before). It felt intimidating going into a room we didnt understand anything about how to do it, what to look for clue-wise, or what an example of how to solve a clue was, etc as everything is immersive and revolves solely around the theme of the room and crictical thinking (instead of i found a box or lock now how to solve it, it was heres a clue and how does solving it apply to the theme of the room? For example: if i were in a subway, in our case, how would i use information about the theme to solve the clue or puzzle.)

The pros and cons: Pros... Awesome room decor and effects! Two thumbs way up 👍 👍

Not having a clock counting down in the room was nice because it kept everyone calmer and even when we were warned we had 5 minutes left, everyone was chill until the very last second...and that was good because we escaped with only 37 seconds left! Had we had a clock counting down we would've gone into freaked-out mode where the brain doesn't think well anymore or we might have shut down completely and stopped trying (thus not escaping). But there was a con with this too (see below...)

Although you are only allowed to call in 2 hint requests, the game master is good at offering in useful clues to you to keep the pace of the room going. And that was exceedingly imperative in our escaping as otherwise we wouldn't have been able to get out in time.

Cons... Our 9 year old spent most of the experience with nothing to do. With lock and keys rooms, she can help by continuously finding new locks or keys or puzzles to solve. In this room since you kind of "make up your own puzzles" in a way (more on what i mean in a second), there's nothing for her to do since she doesnt know what we're looking for.

What i mean by "making your own puzzles" is not that you are physically creating puzzles in the room to solve, but rather, that you have to think of where to see a new puzzle opportunity in the room. There are a lot of clues everywhere. But there's nothing that directly is found to show you how to apply those clues. So you have to come up with in your thought process all of that info for yourself based off the theme of the room. This was very challenging for us to think this way. (Ie: in a gen 1 room you might find a lock that requires a key so you search for a key, or you find a lock that requires a word to put in so now that you have the idea of what it is you look specifically for to get that answer. So it gives you the idea first, then you find the answer. Here in a gen 2 room, the beginning idea has to come from your brain based off the theme of the room and then you have to solve that idea.)

Not having a clock in the room made the last-second escape more anticlimactic...The intensity of the countdown makes the adrenaline rush and heart pump and thus when you escape it's so exhilarating! We all were so relaxed (to an extent) in the room that when we finally broke out it was just kinda like "oh we're done. Cool." Instead of "woo hoo! We did it! Yeahhhh!!!!" So that was different not having that final rush.

The walkie talkie set up and even intercom were both hard to hear unless everyone was dead silent. So we all had to stop everything in order to hear what was being said.

Overall, though, we had a great experience and would definitely go back to try another room at this location! The Tomb Explorer one...

All escape rooms should be required to take lessons from the designers of the escape rooms here. These were great!!! We originally booked Subway Escape for its less typical theme and then hesitantly booked Carnegie's Millions sight unseen in order to do two in one day. We hesitated because in all likelihood, no one else would book our time slot and it sounded like the hardest room at the location. With all that being said, neither room was easy, but they flowed with written directions here or there. So for the 53-55 minutes we spent in each room, we were continuously working on things, figuring things out, trying wrong solutions followed by correct solutions. There was often a sense of accomplishment. I had 53-55 minutes of fun and no frustration. Surprisingly, we did get out of Carnegie Millions two minutes quicker than Subway Escape! I will add that Subway Escape had an aspect that I have never seen before in any of the 100+ escape rooms, so I will doubly endorse it without giving anything away. Rooms were well built and the games were well designed.

The only constructive criticism I would offer is that they reconsider their 2-hint system. My small team didn't need any more than 2 hints by some miracle. The gamemaster did chime in a couple extra times reinforcing an instruction to help settle a disagreement between my partner and I. It would haven't been necessary if my partner would have just listened to...

I had no idea how this birthday party would go - 10 boys, 10-YEAR-OLD BOYS, and only 3 adults. Split between two escape rooms. I was prepared to leave with a headache and a greatly diminished will to live. So imagine my surprise when it turned out to be SO FUN. For real. Group 1, including me, tried the Carnegie's Millions room (group 2 did the Subway Escape, and most seemed to love it, though one kid thought it was a little creepy. Something to keep in mind if you're ever planning to take your kids). As for Carnegie's Millions, I'm told it's the most challenging room, and it definitely fit that bill. But challenging means interesting, and since it was just me and a bunch of kids, the staff piped in with helpful hints at the exact right times. I don't think kids could have completed it without an adult in the room (we didn't complete it in the hour anyway), but the Escape Room staff does a great job in making it kid-friendly. So, verdict - great place, great to take your kids to. And team-building can be just as useful for a family as for a bunch of random...