Escape Rooms Connecticut — Attraction in Orange

Our group did The Asylum at Escape Rooms Connecticut. We figured we would do a horror themed theme room to get into the Halloween Spirit. While we did overall enjoy our time in the room, we had mixed feelings about our overall experience and left wanting more out of the experience.

THEME: If I were to grade the room based purely on the room's theme and setup, it would easily be 5 stars. A team of six paranormal investigators have gone missing after investigating an Asylum that is believed to be the hideout of a Dr. Borden who has been conducting inhumane experiments. You and your team of investigators have been called in to locate the missing paranormal investigators and to infiltrate the Asylum while looking for evidence of Dr. Borden's experiments. Be careful though, as it is believed this Asylum is haunted by the victims of Dr. Borden's experiments! Also, you must hurry as Dr. Borden could arrive at any moment and use you as his next experiment! Right there you have the start of a spooky adventure. Things get even more uncomfortable/unsettling as you begin your venture. Be warned that this room is not for everyone! The majority of this room is mostly in the dark and your only source of light that is provided is from electric candles. You are not allowed to bring in cell phones or any light source and failure to comply with these rules will result in game termination with no refund! I love how you start in what looks like an underground tunnel passage as you make your way to the aforementioned Asylum. Once you get to the Asylum, there are some legitimately creepy props and a couple of jump scares. As for the jump scares, there are no live actors used in this room and nobody will touch you.

PUZZLES: This is where the room started to falter for us. You do get a decent variety involving dexterity, correlation, memory, and observation. There were a few legitimate good puzzles that my group did enjoy. However, what hurt this room was some of the hand holding with some of the puzzles. One of the puzzles had a malfunctioning part that had to be explained to us by our game master and part of the key to solving the puzzle involved looking in a certain place for info and there was a message left behind saying to look here. At that point, the puzzle just felt completely pointless. There was another puzzle that involved placing objects on a board and once again we had to be told by our game master to make sure the objects were flush against the board so it would trigger what we had to do next. It's really frustrating/disappointing to have malfunctioning/finicky equipment and then having constant interruptions from the game master explaining what to do. It ruins the experience! Lastly, if you are going to have a puzzle involving finding objects, please make sure the objects are clearly visible and resemble what you are suppose to be looking for! There were so many times where we went... "Is that supposed to be one? It looks kinda like it?"

GAME MASTER: Aside from the constant interruptions to explain faulty puzzles, our game master for the most part was alright. She clearly explained the rules to us and asked how we wanted our three hints. She had a good attitude and wanted us to have a good time. We just did not like some of the hand holding.

FINAL THOUGHTS: This is a hard one to grade/recommend. We really loved the theme and story behind this room and it felt legitimately creepy. Everything else though just felt disappointing. If all the puzzles had worked as intended and we didn't have have interruptions to throw us out of the experience, maybe it could've been better. This is supposed to be their second hardest room yet we still had more than 10 min left and some of that time was dealing with finicky puzzles. Also the ending felt really anticlimactic without getting into spoilers and we were left wondering if there was something more to do before triggering the ending. If you want a decent scare and theme, then this room is not too bad. If you want a challenge though, you might want to...

I had a hard time rating this because there were a lot of goods, but quite a few things that were just not great. However I do want to say that if you are in the area and wanted to check out an escape room I would still suggest this place.

First the pros. The Asylum was one of the best rooms we have played. While it was not without its faults overall this room was great and had legit jump scares and a creepy vibe all around. The theming and story line was great. The puzzles were a unique combination of puzzles, passwords, and locks. However the very first area and puzzle seemed not well thought out. I don't want to give away anything but it there is potential for splinters or injury on a nail due to a bad design and clue.

For the other two rooms we did (Sector X and The Stolen Relic) we were less impressed. For The Stolen Relic there were several labels around the whole room, from do not touch, to type slow, dial fast etc. It was obvious that they have had issues with the puzzles and the need for all these labels took away from the impressiveness of the room. Also we were warned that after 5 minutes if we did not get the first puzzle we would be given a clue automatically. That is the first we had heard of this and even with the clue it took us almost 10 minutes to find what we were looking for. The room had a lot of potential but with that first clue and all of the labels it was just a frustrating experience. Many times the GM had to tell us we had the answer right but to do it again faster, slower, different.

The other room Sector X suffered from some of the same issues. It was a "spaceship" but had labels on a lot of things. This room we did like better, but the theming felt cheap (normal door with a doorknob that had some plastic decor glued to it). This was a fun room overall, but again just felt like the puzzles were done in a way that doesn't hold up to use. Also no real wow for the escape.

Again if you are in the area and looking for a room, give this place a try, I hesitate to leave just 3 stars as it had many great things about it. I just think back to all of the rooms we have done and others I have rated 4 stars and this just...

My wife and I decided to test an "escape room" for the very first time tonight. I thought that the activity was a tad pricey at first, but after completing "The Stolen Relic" tonight, it was worth every penny! The room master, Gordon, was absolutely fantastic and the owner Julie was extremely personable! The room layout was simple at first glance, but it became apparent soon that we had to pay very close attention to the intricate details! There was a lot of laughter and surprises throughout our one hour adventure into the office of a crazed archeologist! We REALLY enjoyed this experience and are looking forward to trying another one soon! My wife is a tough critic as well and she thoroughly enjoyed it. She was smiling ear to ear when we left and she could not stop talking about it the whole way home! The entrance of the facility is very inviting and has a cool ambiance with "floating" plants and lights. I think something that would be a cool addition is merchandise to commemorate the experience. For this particular adventure, it would be cool to have a replica mini bronzed statue from the adventure. A bronzed subway train for their "Terminal" experience would also be neat. It would be cool to offer them in ornament form as well. This could very well be the next step in their business, but I think I would have definitely bought an ornament. Other ideas would be to offer frames for pictures taken inside the room with something like "I" or "We" "found the Stolen Relic" or "saved the people in The Terminal". These are just a few things that I thought would be awseome! Overall, I would highly recommend this experience to anyone looking...