Hidden Donkey Escape Rooms — Attraction in Irvine

I've done over 140+ rooms across the United States (LA, Bay Area, Seattle, New Orleans, Denver, Houston). I actively travel and seek out the best escape rooms in the US, so this review is catered specifically to enthusiasts looking for unique, high quality rooms.

Irvine School of Wizardry and the Dragon Wand - high 4/5 | Rank 21/140. (Good room with a little something that makes the room distinctive. We will happily recommend these rooms to travelling enthusiasts or locals.)

Irvine School of Wizardry and the Dragon Wand is clearly inspired by a certain book/movie franchise who shall not be named, and goes all in on that particular theme, which it succeeds at quite well. While the room definitely had it's flaws (story in particular) and a weaker second half, the room's magical properties coupled with it's high production value and set carried it into the top 20% of LA games I've played (high praise given its competition of Lab Rat, Stash Housed etc.), and a strong recommendation for people interested more in immersion/set than the puzzles.

Set - The set is great and has some pretty high production value. The game is very high tech, has basically no combination locks, and gives you a wand that enables you to do magic, which in the muggle world, is a combination of a magnet, sensor, and means to get your GM to trigger specific events throughout the game.

The first half of the room did a great job of making you feel like you were in the school with it's interactive props and just generally high polish. The later half was maybe a bit less magical, but still good.

Story - You're trying to find a MacGuffin, and have to go through a series of tests and challenges to find it. This type of story is pretty typical of standard escape rooms, and while it's a bit disappointing that there's no narrative flow or progression, this is still generally fine for us as long as what you were doing made logical sense so that you felt like you are actually in the world and not just in an escape room doing puzzles. The first half of the game accomplished this by having really cool interactive set pieces, triggered events, and light amounts of narrative focused interactions with charactery type components of the room that progressed the game (which I would have liked to see more of).

The second half felt much weaker in this regard - there was a lot less narrative focused interactions, and the tasks that you were doing started to not make nearly as much sense in the context of the story. For example, there was an object that was the focus of a particular puzzle and had significant amounts of flavor in the context of the world. We felt like solving that puzzle should have caused the object to do something narrative driven based on all of the flavor surrounding it, but instead it simply unlocked the next part of the game. This is fine and expected for a standard escape room, but I felt like a more cohesive narrative with a few more character interactions / story snippets / scripted events would have gone a long way in turning this from a good room to a great one given the focus on immersion in this room.

Puzzles - The puzzles were on the simpler side but still reasonable. The funnest puzzles involved the wand and figuring out how to use it to interact with the environment - these interactions were really well done and felt organic, despite being relatively straightforward. The rest of the puzzles themselves were reasonable but mostly standard - there was one fun activity in the room that I wouldn't really consider a puzzle, but was involved and fit the theme really well.

Personal Stats - Escaped with 3 enthusiasts in 50 or so mins taking a few hints on...

(too long didn’t read): Would give a million stars if I could!!! A must-do escape room location with two outstanding rooms!!

Hello Google Reviews! I’ve already left a review on Yelp from my last visit but had to add another form of review after our most recent visit because WOW we had a perfect time!!! Last time we visited, we did Irvine School of Wizardry’s Dragon Wand room, which blew us all out of the water! That was about a year ago, and it has held up as all 4 of us’s favorite room (for context I’ve done over 20!) The effects, atmosphere, room design, game design, props, etc were absolutely top tier and we were all ecstatic to come back when the Phoenix Ring room opened! The room and customer service this time around absolutely held up and exceeded our expectations from last time! The puzzles were different yet similarly themed and equally made you think outside the box! They were challenging (some of the puzzles just make you THINK! Like they should!) but not too obscenely difficult. Without spoiling anything, everything in this room clicked together and it made SENSE why you were doing what you were doing. Our group after being stuck on one particular puzzle for a while (totally our fault, we were being silly and overlooked something!) still managed to uncover the Goblin’s Secrets with a little over 5 minutes to spare! This time around, our game master, Said, was so incredibly thorough with the rules and expectations of the room and made sure we knew to avoid certain locks that would lead us on the wrong trail (there is an element of replay-ability they are planning on adding to this room in the near future! Don’t worry, if you listen to the GM it won’t affect or confuse your gameplay at all!)! He also was so kind after our game and took the time to answer any questions we had about our experience (without spoiling any of the future room’s mysteries!)! He was absolutely fantastic and such a kind, warm, and friendly soul! Higher-tech rooms like these often require more attentiveness from the GM to ensure everything runs smoothly and all the puzzles work as they should (not to mention, they need to be paying attention to give the the proper hints you need to move forward!)! Said was fantastic! Everything in our game went perfectly and that is all thanks to Said! We can’t wait to come back and replay the room when the second track...

As an escape room enthusiast, I got this as a gift for my birthday, and so glad that I received it because honestly, it was the first time I have heard of this escape room. My family and I had a great time!! We played the Dragon Wand and it was so immersive and interactive. Loved the different types of puzzles that they presented during the whole escape room. It was one of my kids' faves to date!! If you are a Harry Potter fan (which we are), or just love wizards and magic, this escape room is for you!!! You will not be disappointed. Also, I love how they give you a group photo at the end. We will definitely be back to try the other room in the future. Thank you Hidden Donkey Escape Rooms for the experience. A great time for the whole family (FYI: I have elementary school kids, so it wasn't too scary or difficult for them, they were able to...