ROOM 5280 - Raleigh Live Escape Games — Attraction in Raleigh

As a frequent escape room enthusiast, we had maxed out on all locations in my local city. So we decided to begin exploring within the neighboring city of Raleigh. Room 5280 is where we had decided to visit first….

Overall, I would say the visit was around subpar. Me and my boyfriend have mixed feelings about the visit due to the room itself versus the staff. I’ll start with the room.

We came and did “The Dark Room.” The room itself was generally spooky, but only had it not been for the darkness that is present while in the room as the name suggest. Other than that factor, the decor and aesthetics put into the room was somewhat lackluster. Not very much thought considering almost everything is just painted on the wall. Also, this is the first escape i’ve visited where there’s no engagement “video,” to go with the room, but i’d say this factor left me more puzzled then disappointed (personal choice maybe?). We tend to enjoy rooms with more props, interactives, unique gadgets and such. But for other parts we can say that eventually came, making it a overall decent experience. The puzzles were pretty difficult and definitely required brain power. This we enjoyed. Also, the back story that came with i’d say was unique.

However, our issue majority was with the service we received from the staff. On a positive note, the staff when arriving is welcoming, friendly, and patient. The overall introductory process was easygoing. What left us feeling disserviced, was the staff’s attentiveness during the game. For starters, the door is legit locked during the game. This was concerning, not just for safety reasons, but because if we needed to step out somehow, we had to rely on the staff to be attentively monitoring in order to do so. And this they did not. On numerous occasions throughout the game, we found ourselves hands up (as instructed), waving, even resorting to yelling for minutes at a time in order to try to get the staff’s attention to get a clue that we were informed we had limitless permission for. On one instance we ended up waiting 4 minutes before getting a game master’s response, and this I had only known because I had to set my own timer on my phone in order to monitor how much time we had left in the room. That itself was strange, that they did not visually or atleast verbally give us anything to be aware of our time spent until reaching the final part of the room. Anyway, waiting on the staff to answer when needing help ate very much into our escape time, leaving us to feel things might have gone more smoothly if they’d been more attentive. Also, the staff didn’t do well at supervising the behavior volumes of neighboring gameplay. The room we were doing could only be half as spooky as we had to constantly deal with the ruckus of stomping and yelling of neighboring customers in their room. I know within good measure not to expect it to be completely silent when doing a room with other customers there, but to us it didn’t even seem as if the staff had advised some decency from the neighboring guest to improve the experience for others as the commotion was just that loud and distracting. (Maybe they can solve this by adding some audio to the room?)

To end, the proper feeling for this visit would’ve been more 2 1/2 starts rather than just two if there was a option, being there was some pros. My hope is the staff will improve their attentiveness and maybe we will consider visiting Room 5280...

I did "The Dark Room" along with my usual team. We are huge escape room fans and have done most of the rooms in the greater Raleigh-Durham area. I would be doing a disservice to Room 5280 if I didn't separate this review into two parts.

The room itself was nice. Dark, spooky, and made you think. As others reviewers have said, the decor could be better, but it's not lacking and definitely not enough to make for a bad experience. The puzzles were moderately difficult but all entirely doable. We did request one hint to make sure we were on the right track with one of our combinations as the lock box times out for incorrect inputs. We completed the room with approximately 9 minutes left, which is near normal for my team. The room would get 4/5 stars, and would get my recommendation, if not for...

The staff. Wow. I hope our experience was a fluke because I don't want to think our experience was typical. For the first time ever, the service was seriously substandard. For starters, the door is legitimately locked. There was no button or key for exit in the case of emergency. Instead, you wave to the camera and ask to be let out by the staff if needed. We didn't really think anything about it as we've actually never needed to use the feature. What made this policy stand out is that had we needed to get out, I am certain we would not have been able to, at least not in a timely manner. The hint we requested was at 23 minutes remaining. We got that hint 9 minutes later. I can only assume that the game host was trying to determine what part of the room we needed help with for those 9 minutes, because otherwise there was no one watching our game. After waving at multiple cameras, strobing lights in front of the camera, requesting the hint verbally multiple times, and knocking on the walls, we finally got our hint. After successfully escaping, we usually are met by the game host to discuss what went well and what we enjoyed. Instead we waited for a few minutes for the staff to come meet us in the hallway. We contemplated just leaving but were eventually met by the game host.

Unfortunately, Room 5280 is not in the same league as its competition. With such a great location and so much potential, this was...

Group of three of us attempted the "Experiment" room at this facility, and we weren't particularly impressed. The facility is clean enough, parking isn't too difficult, and the staff is friendly, so there's a couple small pros.

The room itself, which is the focus of an Escape Game, just was not well done. "The Experiment" consisted of one small dingy room, which wasn't decorated nicely and didn't have much going on in terms of themes or backstory. You're just sort of led into a room, they give you a three sentence explanation of what the objective is, and it begins. Boring. I have done several Escape Rooms that are just a lot more visually interesting.

The puzzles themselves were our main problem. Multiple times, puzzle mechanics simply did not WORK properly, which brings you to a grinding halt. Example: one puzzle required you to weigh an object and use that measurement as a lock code. We weighed the object multiple times, and tried the code several times (+/- .01-.02 as instructed), until eventually the gamemaster had to intercede and give us the number, which wasted 15+ minutes of our time and frustrated us. The number given was significantly off of what the scale was giving us, so we could not have progressed unless told the answer. This happened 2-3 times during the room, which alone pretty much ruins the experience.

Even the puzzles that DID work were not particularly well thought out or fun, and we found ourselves sighing and going "Why would I have thought to do this?" when given a hint. Objects in the room did not connect well to each other, and hints given via things found in the room were generally too vague. One member of our group just threw their hands up and said "I'm done, this sucks", which I've never seen them do during the past 12-15 rooms we've done.

Overall, I would not recommend this Escape Room, especially to veteran enthusiast types like us. Whole thing feels shoddily thrown together, and the room we did was just... not fun. Threw them a 2 star because the staff was friendly enough, not...