NTER - North Texas Escape Rooms — Attraction in McKinney

I want to start off by saying, I absolutely love doing escape rooms, and I love bringing new people to do them with me, so it’s a little sad that im writing this right now. We did two rooms here, because I had a guest from out of town that enjoyed the first room (even with all the issues we ran into), so we wanted to give it a fair shot. Each time we were a team of 3 (1 beginner new to escape rooms, 1 intermediate level, 1 advanced level with lots of escape room experience). We escaped both rooms but had multiple issues in BOTH rooms. It was not worth the $210 we paid. I’m a bit sad writing this review because I was very optimistic for the second room experience, but sadly it was worse. I’ll try to summarize the issues without giving away details of the room for future customers. If you don’t like spoilers stop reading after this TLDR: rooms had multiple problems, lack of detail and room prep made the experience feel broken up. It was kinda expensive for it having many bugs. I feel I can’t give it a proper review without spoiling anything.

minor spoilers warning

Room 1 Problems (Penthouse) Smells were not accurate to solve the puzzle. We solved it by process of elimination, but even by that point if we were not good with scents, it would have been impossible to solve. The game was missing a piece. After like 20 minutes of trying to solve the puzzle, we were alerted by the game master what the missing piece was. But it kinda ruined the momentum and whole experience. I think our game master also kinda didn’t care, and it made it feel awkward to ask for clues. It was only after we had 15 or so minutes left, we were told we were missing the piece so we had to rush through to get out with still 3 mins left.

Room 2 Problems (Amnesia) 4 puzzles were already either completed or was just randomly open, so we had a few clues where we just had left over keys or simply didn’t need to solve the puzzle. (Key on the ids box, the string from the puzzle box, the drawer with light box was already open, and the underneath panel that had a number was already open/ not plugged in. The worst part is afterwards we were told that we were a ‘test group’ for the Amnesia room. Apparently we were the first ones to play after the room was set up again to this location. It seems like a paying customer shouldn’t be the ‘test group.’ The reality is that in an escape room if every detail isn’t perfect, it ruins the experience. So I’d go somewhere else where they pay attention to the details. This game was also missing a piece. Luckily the game master came in and gave it to us before too much time passed, but by that point we were already disappointed with the experience. It was a bit awkward having our photo taken...

We have done around 8 escape rooms and love doing them. The room we did in this place was okay multiple rooms which is nice. The set is fine with a moderate level of detail, nothing like a movie set. The staff are not very attentive we started our room 15 minutes late waiting to be helped. The reason for the low rating is that the final puzzle in our room involved a string and a map. The string has to be a specific length to get the correct answer on the map. We could not solve it, kept getting a wrong answer. When time ran out the game host came in the room and said sometimes the string length gets messed up and the ability to solve the puzzle is messed up/can't be solved correctly. So if the string length is altered by the previous group and if it's not put back correctly the answer you get to the puzzle will be incorrect every time. To be clear it's the game hosts responsibility to make sure the length is correct and she didn't check it before we started. She was also not apologetic about the mistake. That was frustrating. She did not offer any clue or information about the string length being off while she watched us continue to get the wrong answer on the map repeatedly. It was my understanding that this occurs on occasion based on how she acted. It would have been nice if the game host had paid attention to us solving it with the wrong answer repeatedly and had helped us. Instead she said nothing. So the low rating is for a final puzzle that was not solvable and a game host that was not helpful or attentive. It would have helped if she had at least apologized for the mistake on the final puzzle instead of being nonchalant about it. There are lots of escape rooms with attentive hosts and clues that work correctly every time. I recommend trying The Escape Game in the Grapevine mall or Red Door Escape. The staff are more professional and the sets are...

This escape room has promise, but our experience was not what I assume NTER is capable of. We signed up online for the Amnesia experience. Sign up was easy and we could fill our waivers out online so when we walked in the door, we were ready to go. The guide greeted us as we walked in, but informed us that one of the puzzles was broken, and later explained that the hint button was broken as well. Instead of the puzzle, they said that they would just unlock the door when we got to when it was necessary. Instead of the hint button, they told us that they would be watching us through the camera and that there were microphones in each room that we could talk to them and just ask for a hint. The problem is that when we needed a hint and asked for one, we did not get a response immediately. We also found that another puzzle was broken and we spent multiple minutes struggling with a puzzle that wasn't working. We also asked for a hint because of these struggles and lost more time going back and forth trying to trouble shoot the broken puzzle. By the time we got past that puzzle, we only had 2 minutes left. We ended up running out of time and learned we were only one puzzle from the end. At the pace we were going, we would have finished if we didn't lose as much time dealing with broken puzzles.

All that being said, the guides were good, the storyline was engaging, and the experience was fun. I think if everything had been working properly, this would have been a...