Escapomania Midtown - Escape room — Attraction in Ocean City

Escape Room tries to create a real-life version of puzzle-based video games such as Myst, Riven, and The Room. The concept sounds awesome: You're locked in a room with 1 hour to solve a series of puzzles and riddles to find the prize and get out. Unfortunately, it fails to deliver on the fun factor for a number of reasons, and charges you at least twice as much as it's worth.

First, the decor. My wife and I selected the Pirate's Treasure Room. The description on the website evoked images of "Pirates of the Carribean." I expected an ornate set, wood-planked walls, maybe a pool of water or something. What we walked into quite literally looked like a dentist's waiting room that had been decorated for a child's birthday party with thrift store finds and dollar store toys. It's an 8' x 10' room with regular painted sheet rock walls and carpet. It looks exactly like every single windowless office you've ever been in, which is not exactly what you want to see when you're on vacation. There was a laminated treasure map scotch-taped to the wall, a vinyl jolly roger flag, and puzzle boxes that were locked with plain old master locks. An utter disappointment that provided absolutely no immersion whatsoever.

Second, the puzzles. They're not in the least bit difficult. Some word games, a few riddles, and trial and error with keys and locks. My group only needed 22 minutes to complete the room, which roughly works out to $1/minute per participant. Speaking of which...

Third, the group. For the pirate room, they book up to 8 participants at a time. The room is barely even big enough to fit 8 people in it. And if you don't book up the whole room, the empty slots will be sold to other people. My wife and I ended up getting stuck with another couple and their 4 young children (all under 9 years old). The kids ran amuck, rushing to solve all the puzzles themselves. We hardly got to participate at all. So basically I blew 50 bucks to watch someone else's kids have fun for less than half an hour.

The takaway: This is Ocean City. You've got beaches, restaraunts, movie theaters, mini golf, amusement park rides, the boardwalk, a musuem... there are literally a thousand better ways that you can spend your money while you're here. I highly suggest you avoid this tourist trap and spend your money on something you'll...

Unfortunately my family and I didn't have the greatest experience at this escape room location, especially compared with other escape rooms we have completed in the past.

First, the employee at the front desk was very disrespectful. She refused to let us use the restroom before we began, despite arriving at least 10 minutes early. It was also clear that the employees were not watching us during our experience. Oftentimes we would ask for a specific hint and would receive a clue to a puzzle we completed several minutes prior. When I stepped out of the room to ask for a hint in person after waiting a reasonable amount of time, I was rudely told to go back into the room. We once again got the wrong hint after that encounter. We completed the room with very little time left because of this.

The puzzle design of our particular escape room left something to be desired. The storyline felt haphazardly put together and after leaving the room, none of us could even recall who the story's culprit was.

Overall, we were very disappointed with our experience. I suggest choosing a different location for your...

Really disappointed with my experience in the Alice in Wonderland room. I invited my entire family (8 of us) to this room as a birthday celebration. It turned out to be the most underwhelming escape room experience I’ve ever had (my family has done many and we always enjoy ourselves).

It’s $32 a person and you only get 45 mins compared to an hour. There was no backstory provided, no instructions on how to ask for clues. The room itself was very small and there were not enough puzzles to keep all 8 of us going at the same time. In the first room we literally all just watched on person work on the puzzle because there was nothing else we could do.

Clues were given to us without asking, sometimes right as we were about to solve it, which ruined the fun. The puzzles/clues themselves really did not make much sense and weren’t well written.

We expected more from an Alice themed room. It wasn’t trippy, it was barely decorated to fit the theme.

I really wanted to like it but I walked out very...