The Rift — Attraction in Provo

The Rift in Provo is a really unique and creative experience. It’s essentially an augmented reality (AR) scavenger hunt where you and your group are given handheld devices to navigate through different themed adventures. These devices use an app to guide you through the game, showing you clues, puzzles, and AR visuals that you interact with to solve mysteries. The whole experience combines technology with a physical, maze-like setting, making it immersive and engaging.

We did The Haunt, which was a ghost-themed adventure where the goal was to uncover clues, solve puzzles, and piece together the mystery of the ghost haunting the space. You use the devices to scan objects, trigger events, and move the story forward. It’s a mix of solving riddles and exploring the environment, which keeps things interactive and fun.

That said, there are some issues. The devices get really hot because they’re running the app continuously, and towards the end of our session, they started slowing down significantly. Unfortunately, a few devices in our group completely stopped working, which meant some people couldn’t continue participating. This was pretty disappointing, especially for a group activity.

Another downside is that when other groups are there, it can feel chaotic. Many of the puzzles involve scanning pictures on the walls, and if multiple groups are trying to do this at the same time, it starts to feel like you’re just in each other’s way. It takes away from the immersion and makes it harder to focus on your own game.

The concept is fantastic, and the layout is really cool, but it still feels like it needs some work to iron out the technical bugs and improve the flow when multiple groups are playing. If you’re a smaller group and don’t mind dealing with a few glitches, it’s worth trying out.

I’d give it 3 stars for now, but I can see this being a five-star experience if the technical issues and group dynamics are addressed. I can’t comment on the other adventures they offer, but I’d be curious to see if those run...

This is a really fun experience! It’s inside the Provo mall, you have to go down the stairs to find it. You watch an orientation and they give you each a phone to use with the app already on it. There’s a small tutorial before you start to make sure you get the gist- all of that takes about 15 min and you actually have only 30 min in the Rift, I think. You go throughout a labyrinth of rooms using your phone to collect gems and coins and solve puzzles. It was fun! We had to collect several items before we could catch dragons, eventually getting a trophy at the end. We had a couple things we thought could be improved. First, it would be much funner if you had to actively interact with objects and not just through your phone- opening a book, a secret door, or solving a physical puzzle would add loads to it. The items that can be interacted with should be clearly marked to save time and lessen confusion, but it would be fun. Second, there was a “store” where you could spend the points you got on your adventure. I think the store should be available after you finish the game- we didn’t realize it wouldn’t be and missed our chance to “buy” anything! Third, we weren’t quite briefed on how the items we picked up would accumulate at the bottom of the app screen, we didn’t know we had to click on those or that we could scroll through them, which wasted time for us. It would be easy to explain in the tutorial- if it was explained, all four of us missed it, so it should be emphasized more. Lastly, there was a whole storyline to how the rift appeared that seemed completely irrelevant to our actual mission of catching dragons. It would be cool to have ten minutes of guided assistance to explore that storyline (with rewards for doing so) before you start gathering items to catch dragons. We did some of it before realizing that it was doing nothing for our mission and had...

This was a really fun experience! You can tell they put a lot of love into the story and concept for this place. Definitely has some fun unique elements with the AR that you don't find in a typical escape room. The challenge wasn't super super difficult, which I actually liked because it wasn't crazy stressful to complete haha, and you could just focus on enjoying the experience and exploring the rooms. Just know what you're getting into (it's not so much about solving crazy difficult puzzles as about exploring and playing the little minigames) and you'll have a great time! Even though we solved the main challenge pretty quickly, they had some fun little "bonus objectives" that you could do at the end that we enjoyed, which I thought was a fun touch because it gave you an excuse to keep exploring and do some of the little activities again. (Even if they hadn't had the bonus activities though, I still would've explored the whole place just because it's a fun, lovingly designed space that packs a lot in!) My one disappointment was that there was some AI art used in some of the displays. (guys, I am an artist and I would be willing to paint you some portraits of Thomas and Abigail just so you don't have to use the AI versions 😅 I am not joking about this.) On the other hand, I loved the handmade elements - the curly "rift marks" painted on the walls and the floor mural in one section were AWESOME, really charming and fun. And the little decorations were great. You can tell whoever decorated and picked them out had a lot of fun and put a lot of care into it. Overall, I'd definitely recommend checking this out and supporting them! It was a really fun date night for us, totally affordable for college students, and would also be a great activity to do as a family. Plus the people who run it seem very lovely and sincerely excited about helping you have a...