Escape Game Experience — Attraction in Maumee

Bought 4 tickets for the Elder Wand room for a buddy for his birthday. This was a first for our group, so we went into it with a positive, casual attitude and ready to have fun. We realized prior to getting there that we were going to be in the Escape Room game with people we didn’t know, which we were nervous about at first, but we quickly decided that it could make it even more fun.... and it was, for the most part, except for one of the people in there.

Story time!

We walked in 30 minutes prior to our time slot to sign the waivers. Then we waited around for the other group to get there. They were late. The GM (game master, the guy in the room with you to give hints/keep you from breaking stuff) took us back and talked to us in the hall for a few minutes prior to taking us in the first room. He was chill, friendly, asked us if we had done any escape games before. You could tell the girl in the other group was competitive, which made no sense since it’s a game you’re suppose to work together on. She kept going on and on about how she’s done escape rooms all over the U.S., how they’re pros, and this one was going to be a cakewalk. The GM explained to her that this game was a bit different than all the other ones because they made it themself. She wasn’t convinced, not even a little. He also explained that some things weren’t meant to be touched, and not to be rough trying to open somethings. He asked us not to be a “yanker”. Everyone seemed so mature, I didn’t think it’s be an issue we’d see.

We entered the room. Decor and props were actually really well done. The room aesthetic surpassed my expectations, which was awesome. Everyone started searching for clues, keys, hints etc. We played for a little while before everyone started noticing how aggressive this girl was. The GM has to continuously tell her to stop yanking on things that wasn’t meant to open. He was polite at first, explaining that some props are labeled with Do Not Touch. Didn’t stop her. In fact, there was a chest that was wrapped and locked with plastic chains that needed a key, and she just grabbed a handful of chain and yanked it right off the side to get inside. He reprimanded her for her roughness. She was rude everytime he had to say something to her, and at this point it was starting to ruin the game for everyone else. You could feel the tension and awkwardness growing in the rooms.

She started making comments like how The GM was a jerk, but then she started making comments to her fiancée about MY GROUP on how disorganized we were!! I admit, it took us a good 10 minutes before we got into a rhythm, but we always announced when we found something and we always kept all hints/clues on an agreed upon table so everyone had access/wasn’t wasting time re-finding things! We did our best, despite dealing with the drama and stress the girl was causing.

I’m not normally the type that leaves reviews, good or bad, but I seen that the girl left a really nasty one sided review and I felt it was important to share as well since I was one of the unfortunates trapped in the room with her. Needless to say, it was very motivating to find our way out!

Here’s her review :)

Melissa Heslep “Not impressed by this place. Overpriced. Puzzles/locks/room flow very disorganized. Even the waiver you sign looks like a 5th grader typed it into Notepad. The front desk woman was a doll, but the guy babysitting us in the room was snarky and condescending. Given the terrible attitude in the owner's responses to criticism here, I'm not surprised his/her employees also have issues with customer interaction. Shouldnt be in a service industry if you cant handle criticism.”

TLDR; Escape Game gave us a great experience. Rooms were well decorated and submersive, puzzles were tricky but cleverly fit into the story, staff was friendly and accommodating. Only downside is you could potentially be stuck with a braggy, controlling b*@¢h who can’t respect rules. That’s not the owners fault, though.

Oh, and...

Had a pretty terrible experience here. My fiancé left a review & I was not going to, but after seeing many of the responses from the owner, I don’t think this business deserves to not have a review left.

We were put in the escape room by ourselves with the game master who had a very snarky tone with us the entire game. Our past experiences with escape rooms is that you typically shouldn’t need more that 3-5 hints to escape in time over 50% of the time. We were told by our game master that less than 3% of people escape the room we played without using a ton of clues. I believe that defeats the purpose of an escape room, if you have a game master telling you every step.

The room we were in had probably 17 or so locks that needed to be opened, which is obviously too much for 2 people to do in an hour without hints. We assumed that, like most escape rooms, there would be 5-ish locks, so after we opened 2 locks, we thought we were doing OK with 40 minutes to spare. At that point the game master rudely told us “you’ve only opened 2 locks you are going to want to use more hints”. In addition to this, during the entire game she would take puzzle pieces from us and tell us that those pieces to the puzzle were no longer relevant because we were supposed to open a chest first that would’ve led us to that puzzle piece. You should not have to open a lock to get a clue to figure out something that does not require another lock to be opened.

Ultimately, with a half hour left, the game master told us there was no way we’d complete the room in time without her just telling us what to do. So she walked side by side with us acting like we were dumb, and that it was very obvious what needed to be done. Essentially unlocking each lock for us until our time expired.

If you’re planning to spend $50 here on two tickets for a date with your significant other, do yourself a favor & stay in and flush that $50 down the toilet. You’ll have a better, more memorable...

I’m shocked that there is an overall rating this high. My spouse and I have done a ton of escape rooms in various cities and we both pretty much HATEDDDDD this one (Sherlock Steampunk). The person at the front was incredibly pretentious and seemed almost annoyed about talking to us. We are good at escape rooms and said we’d try Challenge Mode and he essentially started to talk us out of it? “Did you see the 0% escape rate? I make these rooms for the people who have done 30+ escape rooms and want a challenge”

Uhhhh yeah, that’s us, my dude. He made us feel weird so we did Story Mode instead. The actual Game Master was weird too, felt like he was very condescending, clues were vague. We found it annoying that you essentially had to tell them what to give you a hint on. Like, you’re watching right? Why don’t YOU, the expert, tell US what might be helpful to get us moving in the right direction. Pretty sure we only ended up using 3 clues anyway, so we probably could have done Challenge Mode.

I saw another reviewer who mentioned this was just “locks everywhere” and I have to agree - there were just an insane number of boxes and locks, it was hard to keep track of everything and there were a number of things that were just not intuitive at all. The puzzles that you did have to solve were just abstract or unnecessarily hard in some way. It was frustrating. There were several moments i considered just stopping and leaving the room entirely - it wasn’t “fun” it was just frustrating IMO.

Not having a timer was also annoying as heck. It’s an escape room, there’s a time limit, just let me keep track of how much time we have left. The GM walked in to tell us time was up as we were literally looking at the end objective that said we won the game.

If you’re an escape room enthusiast, this can be an interesting challenge, but if you are new to escape rooms I really would...