PanIQ Escape Room San Jose — Attraction in San Jose

Have done all of the rooms at this location, and they’re MOSTLY good. PanIQ is one of the better escape room locations in South Bay. In terms of difficulty, I would rank in them in this order: Perfect Crime, Insane Asylum, Wild West, and Raising Atlantis.

Perfect Crime: A little linear, so it’s hard to split up and work independently for the hour. Did with a group of 5, and I’d rank this as the best room because of the puzzles/decor. Escaped with a few minutes left.

Insane Asylum: A couple of the rooms were very dark, and it was a bit annoying to have to read/look for puzzles in the dark. If you’re scared very easily, avoid this room. Did with a group of 5, and there was enough for the group to split into 2 and work on separately. Escaped with some time on the clock.

Wild West: Great beginner room. Did with a group of 6, and it was fun for everybody. Lots of themed puzzles/challenges.

Raising Atlantis: While the other rooms at PanIQ are worth checking out, this room was a complete miss. Maybe because the room is newer and a lot of things still need to be worked out with it, but a couple of the puzzles in this room are pretty stupid and really ruin the experience. One involved needing to know to cover some sensors for almost 10 seconds, which the game master ultimately had to tell us after our group was stuck on it for a solid 5 minutes. I don’t know who would do it for more than like 5 unless told otherwise. Another one was a more physical puzzle that was extremely difficult and ultimately blocked us from getting any further in the room.. we knew what needed to be done and how to do it, but nobody in the group was able to do it, and we ended up failing because of it. I’m a fan of the other rooms of PanIQ in San Jose and their other locations, but this room was ridiculous. $50 per person for a room of this quality was such a waste.

Location is a little hard to find, but lots of parking in the area. PanIQ’s unit is at the end of a walkway around where the GPS leads you. One annoying thing about this location is that you communicate with the game master using a walkie talkie (which is a thing at other escape room locations too), but it’s a hassle to have to manage/use. We dropped the walkie talkie while trying to ask for a clue and ended up talking with a party in another room, and we lost a few minutes trying to get the game master’s attention and then coming in and putting us back on the...

We did Wild West, Perfect Crime, and Atlantis Rising.

Service: The employees there are always very funny and make us feel welcomed. They make us refer to them as some funny way when we ask for hints, which I thought is really funny. Sometimes they also dress up, and act. I really applaud the service for going out of there way to be so funny.

Wild West: To be honest, the sets are amazing for all these rooms (but this applies to all of the rooms (that I have done)). The rooms are large, and the sets really make me feel really immersed The puzzles in this room I thought were really great, and the way they incorprated it into the room was impressive. The only thing that bothered me was there was a physical puzzle that we got stuck on for so long, and that lead to the fact that we couldn't escape. We probably lost about 20 minutes on it. Usually when I think of a escape room, it's usually referring to what you can solve using your brain. I think there should be a alternate puzzles so if they can't physically do the puzzle they can do another puzzle which will give same result. If my dad with his long arms wasen't there, i'm not sure that any of us would be able to do that.

Perfect Crime - Again, the set is so nice and pleasent. It was like a vintage house, and it was so pretty. The puzzles are so unique and some of them I've never seen anywhere. I liked how in this room, you weren't really trying to escape but trying to find who commited the crime, kinda like clue. This room was really hard for us, as a family of 4 with me, my brother, my dad and my mom. I'm 15 and my brother is 11. It's a vey difficult room, and some of the puzzles are really hard and time consuming. One that I thought unbelivable hard was this super complex family tree. Anyways, if your really good at escape rooms maybe you'll do very in this room.

Alantis - this room has such a good variety of the puzzles. I wouldn't say the puzzles are too hard. The puzzles are okay, but the room has a big variety of puzzles and it's just not clues to locks. Another that bothered is that it has an agility puzzle, and it doesn't require brain work at all. It's a pretty hard physical puzzle also. This was one I think is responsibile for our fail, so it kinda annoys me. No one is my family is good at agility...

So many great reviews, but my experience was the complete opposite. While arriving at the front desk, the man at the front desk was obviously projecting frustration onto us when we just arrived on 11/7 @ 4pm. First he basically screamed at us saying “we have a face mask policy, you have to keep your mask on the entire time you are in the facility, if I see you pull it down one more time I will stop the game” when one of us pulled out mask down for less than 2 seconds to unlock the phone to sign waivers. Then, he continued to only come out when he had something demeaning to say, and made his counterpart explain anything that would be helpful to us. While in the process of signing waivers, he would peek his head out and yell “I only got 4, you guys can’t start until all of you fill one out” 2 minutes into us filling out waivers. Then, throughout the game he sounded annoyed while giving hints in a very passive aggressive tone. He wasn’t even paying attention to what step we were on and we had to explain what we’ve done before he could answer our question.

The man and women that came for the afternoon shift were pleasant though.

I don’t know what we did to deserve this treatment. Maybe because we didn’t fill waivers out before we got there? Because they send an email one out prior to you arriving, which we never would have known. Maybe because we arrived on time and not 15 mins early because finding the facility was so hard? Maybe cause someone came late to relieve him? Problems at home? Maybe because we were Asian?

Regardless, this man ruined the entire experience for us, and we vowed never to come back. He effected our moods so much that 3 of us did not want to play anymore, and we were constantly at each other’s necks trying to solve puzzles, just in a bad mood.

Game masters serve such a greater purpose than just supervising players and policing players. You do that in the background while trying to encourage and motivate us. I will honestly NEVER come back here again. Very strange how this place is top rated...