Elusive Escape Rooms — Attraction in Lake Delton

My wife decided she wanted to try something different with the kids for fun being it's been way to cold to go outside and play. She surprised us all with a fun trip to the Wisconsin Dells to the famous "Elusive Escape Rooms" right in the middle of town. My wife called and spoke to a very nice gentleman named Bill our "Game Master" to inquire about all the details we needed to know prior. As a family we had never experienced an escape room before. This is were the real fun began. We had to reserve a time slot... We picked a themed mission from several different choices this company offers. We picked one that was to our experience level and theme we thought the kids would love. We paid over the phone and away we went. We showed up right on time and was giving a brief description of what to expect from Bill our "Game Master" (also just so happens to be the owner) when we entered the room excited and nervous. I spoke with Bill for a few moments and he was very nice, informative, and great with the kids. He explained that he is a local area farmer and his family created this business to help keep his struggling farm afloat during these unique years! I thought to myself what a hard working family and much deserving of our business. So I hope this review I post brings you in more business in the future. Anyways we were told that we had 1 hour to complete our mission. Our goal was to conjour up a potion spell to awaken our Professor in the Enchanted Potion Room. In we went and the fun began..... We had no clue what to do when we first entered but slowly started to figure things out. One clue leads to another kind of a thing. If you are stuck or get into any trouble you can ask for help at any given time. You area watched and listened to the entire time for your help and safety. There is a TV monitor that gives you clues only if you ask for them. You only get so many though and then you are on your own. We choose to let our 7 year old do most of the thinking and the work to figure things out. There was some tough clues, puzzles to be mastered, riddles to be solved, secret code combinations to solve, keys to be found and so much more. We (the adults) needed some help along the way, but as a family of 4 we had an absolute blast trying our best to solve everything. We were able to make it out of the room with a whopping 37 seconds to spare. How about that for a families 1st time. VICTORY! We all agreed that we would come back to this location and try another challenge. The prices we felt we really fair, the rooms were set up super cool, it was very clean inside and most of all the people who were working the business were very friendly and helpful. Customer service experience was 5 star alone. Looking for something new and different to try with your family in the Dells. This place can accomadate just that! Depending on your experience level and size of group there is a perfect challenging activity awaiting for any age group to do together. Especially perfect for the colder months when you can't be outdoors. Perfect team building exercise for companies and their employees. Good Luck you...

Room: crazy cat lady Room theme: 5/5 Puzzle difficulty: 3/5 Fun: 1.5/5 Recommend? Definitely not for beginners. Only if you enjoy a room where the puzzles are hidden in a lot of clutter

Myself and my partner do escape rooms on vacation whenever we go to a new city, and we have completed about 50+ of them. We have seen a large variety of themes, puzzles, and difficulties. So I make this review using my fairly substantial escape room experience. With that said, this is spoiler free:

We tried the crazy cat lady room because we had never seen that theme before! When you get in the room you are greeted with a room FILLED with various cat related props: cat stuffed animals, cat toys, cat calendars, cat carrying cases, cat books, etc. It looked like you entered the sitting room of a lady who collected years worth of cat stuff!

But soon it dawned on us that we would have to sift through all of this stuff in order to find clues, and that became quite a daunting task. Most escape rooms have some additional decoration to add to the theme, and most of the intractable pieces are obviously part of a puzzle you need to solve. However this room was almost pure chaos because we had no idea what was a puzzle and what was decoration. One puzzle included using a book for a clue, but the room had at least 50+ books!! That involved forcing is to search through way too many books. I think the room relied too hard on hiding the clues in all the clutter to add difficulty, rather than letting the puzzles speak for themselves. We found this aspect very frustrating and not fun. Personally I think escape rooms shouldn't make finding the puzzles that difficult, and should instead make the puzzles themselves the challenging part.

One of the other issues we had with the room was that the background sounds played in the room via speaker was so LOUD. We asked our game Master several times to turn it down but they never...

I’m giving it 2 stars because the staff was mostly friendly and our game master was actually also an employee of the high ropes course we did earlier that day.

As for the room itself we did Crazy Cat Lady. I’ve done about 30+ escape rooms and have only failed once. But this is the first time I’ve participated in an escape room where you’re given nudges and clues without even asking for them.

Within the first 3 minutes we were given a nudge. The whole point of escape rooms is to solve the puzzles on your own and ask for hints if you need them. And typically you’re only given 3 anyway.

They did tell us hints were unlimited which is fine but I would have rather they waited for us to ask and not just give us the hints.

I won’t give anything away but there is a laminated puzzle that is cut weirdly and hard to piece together because of the way it’s cut. And it seems to just be there to keep the clock running and waste your time. HOWEVER, before we could even finish it the monitor pings with the answer. So we never actually solved it…

With 10 minutes left it felt like the monitor kept pinging to guide us through the remainder of the room which was disappointing because again, escape rooms are meant for us to solve on our own.

I’m ok with failing a room but at least it was my own genuine effort.

At the end we noticed that we never opened one lock! Half the clues didn’t make sense because we didn’t actually solve them, most of the answers were given to us.

I’m given 2 stars because employees were friendly but once again, escape rooms are meant to be solved by the...