St Louis Escape — Attraction in St. Louis

This wasn't my first escape room, but it was the best I've done. But, like most things, there's still a lot that can be improved about STL Escape.

Pros: -Super immersive -Reasonably priced -Good location -Nice variety of rooms

Cons: -Sometimes awful puzzles -Pretty noisy, can break immersion -Relying on the kindness of strangers or having to buy out the room sucks -Kind of generic puzzles (lots of locked boxes)

Me and my 3 friends did 2 rooms in a day, Curse of The Mummy and The Cellar. We enjoyed both of them extremely, and felt totally immersed. The rooms are totally awesome and extremely detailed, and the claims that it's Hollywood level production is definitely not far off. The Mummy in specific was like stepping onto a movie set, complete with a sand covered floor and giant talking statues, whereas it's not too hard to achieve a spooky Cellar, though nonetheless they did it great. However, the rooms are not separated very well, and we could consistently hear all the other rooms throughout; it was very noisy.

The main reason I'm not giving a 5 star review is mostly due to complaints about the puzzles. Both rooms we did were DARK, which contributes heavily to the puzzles, and to a lot of confusion. In the Mummy we got a flashlight and a blacklight flashlight, but in the Cellar we only got a blacklight flashlight (which gave out and had to be replaced a few minutes in, kind of breaking immersion). A majority of the puzzles are sweeping every surface and object in the room for blacklight writing, or solving riddles to get combinations/hunting for keys to open locks. LOTS and LOTS of locks.

It's kind of to be expected just because there's not much else you can do on that front, but it gets grueling after awhile. In particular though, all 4 of our biggest complaints focused on the manner these puzzles meshed. Most puzzles could be solved entirely within the room, but a LOT of them required reading out of a book they provide you with. At a point, it becomes annoying to have to stop, flip to a page, and read a note about the puzzle you're doing to solve it. Very, very annoying and immersion breaking after a while. You can ask for hints, and even if you don't, the "Game Master" employees will offer cryptic hints if they clearly see you're struggling, but it was so damn loud with the other rooms and the ambient noise that half the time I personally couldn't hear them. Nonetheless, we solved both by the skin of our teeth and loved it.

**Furthermore, minor spoilers, there was a final puzzle in the Cellar that required you to match colors that was absolutely horribly done. The room you're in has incredibly dim, sickly yellow light which makes all the colors seem totally wrong, and it doesn't help that some of the colors are extremely similar and half of them seemed to be made with the same cheapo marker. And our flashlights were all blacklights, so that didn't help either. We almost didn't make it because of this.

The rooms were reasonably priced, especially when compared to others, and they seem to have promos going on pretty regularly. The lobby is kind of cramped, and the layout is pretty awkward, but all the staff were friendly and very in the spirit.

We got very very lucky in that we had no strangers with us both times, partly due to booking late in the day on a Sunday. I see several other low reviews that are due mostly to the fact they got stuck with strangers, which probably would've bogged down our experience a lot. We intend to come back in a month or so to do the...

If you are careful during this unprecedented covid restricted days, then don’t go here . We went to the blacklight golf which would have been really cool. Great ideas and designs, but despite having to make a reservation, it was packed. We had to wait for the large group in front of us to finish and the large group behind us had to wait on us. I assumed you had to make a reservation to have some control over how many people were inside in a small area at one time. This apparently isn't the case since I was bumping into people just trying to move to the next course . It was uncomfortably packed in there. In normal times, this would not bother me . Waiting for groups to finish playing miniature golf is pretty standard . But this isn’t normal times is it ? Being socially distant wasn’t even possible. In addition to the extreme crowding, mask wearing was almost obsolete. Although the signs indicated that masks were required, there were more people In there without masks than there was with. This was hugely frustrating. Maybe younger people aren’t worried about getting sick but I would get very sick and my kids would be quarantined and unable to go to school for a long time if they are exposed . One might say if we are concerned about that, then we should not be going out. And I get that, but we feel comfortable if the recommended guidelines are followed and as far I could tell, those guidelines were supposed to be followed. if you are told that masks and social distancing requirements are in place , than you expect that they will be enforced. Nope! Not here. In fact, although I’m not usually the type of person who does this, (I never even write reviews if I’m unhappy) I even went to tell the people working that hardly anyone was wearing a mask. He assured me that he would come address it . He didn’t. So the second time I found someone else and asked them if anything could be done. His solution was to come in the center of the room and shout a reminder to everyone that they should be wearing masks and then left. Not one person decided that this meant they had to put their mask on. It was really frustrating and disappointing. I understand people are sick of masks. So am I! But if a business advertises that it is required than it should be enforced. I shouldn’t have to go and ask them to enforce it. So if you are thinking about going and believe that because the follow the current safety regulations so you will feel safe- forget it. Wait till everyone is vaccinated because they certainly are not gonna ensure...

I was part of a party that recently did the Oz escape room. We had a frustrating experience. We had correctly figured out a code, but when entering it through a sequence of buttons the machinery didn't work correctly. This caused us to think we had it wrong. We asked the game master for help but they didn't seem to be paying attention at all, despite one of our group summarizing our thoughts and progress so far. They gave us clues to things we had already figured out! I also know that they weren't paying attention because if they had been, then on one of the multiple correct attempts to press the buttons they could have easily interceded and told us we had it right but needed to go slower or whatever. It cost us 15 minutes of game time up front and really soured the rest of the experience.

All that being said, that's not what drove me to actually write the review. I was content to let another member of our party write the negative review as feedback to the management. Except that the manager/owner then gave a nasty response on here. Looking through other negative reviews, it's clear that this type of vitriolic response to negative reviews is a pattern of behavior.

So what I really wanted to say is this: it's critically important to any business to both learn to receive and use negative feedback, but also to be able to deal with public negative criticism constructively. Snapping back and arguing gets you nowhere even if you're right (which you're not, in this case). I understand that in the internet age, negative reviews can damage or ruin a business. But understand that plenty of businesses flush with positive reviews go out of business as well. Do you think that arguing and fighting with us on social media will make us want to return, or spread positive word of mouth? All the positive reviews in the world won't save you if you don't get enough return customers. Whether you think that our criticism is fair or not, we are not complainers who write 1 star reviews at the drop of a hat. We are trying to inform you of a real negative experience we had so that you can learn from it and improve the customer experience in the future.

If we'd simply been told a sincere form of "sorry about that, we'll try to figure out ways to make that less frustrating in the future" we would have likely returned at some future date. As it is now, I question if we would even be welcome on the premises. Is that how you want your...