Riddler's Escape FL — Attraction in The Villages

I came here on two evenings in January 2019 with a friend while visiting relatives in the area. It was only my second experience with an escape room and we had an absolute blast at Clues, Clocks and Keys. The rooms were smaller than that of my previous experience (in Ithaca, NY) but more than made up for it with their creativity, great mix of clever clues and red herrings, and puzzle mechanisms that I had never seen or imagined could work. The facility was clean and well appointed, and the staff friendly; they were attentive to giving additional help if needed, but only enough to encourage your experience, not to spoil it.

On our first evening we did the NIGHTMARE room (rated 4 stars for difficulty). Although we considered ourselves somewhat savvy puzzlers, this was a rewarding yet complex room and we came close, but did not finish in time. What I especially appreciated was that at the end the staff took the time to help us see what we had missed so that we left enlightened rather than frustrated.

This only made us eager for more ... and so we returned the next night for a slightly easier room, the CON-ARTIST (rated 3 stars for difficulty). There are also many clever stages in this room, but this time we had success and we were so proud! I would recommend the CON-ARTIST room as a great place to start for first-timers.

We thoroughly enjoyed both rooms and our entire experience here. The escape room experience is an odd one because by definition you are entering into something that you don't know much about, but there is no reason to have any hesitation here - it is a first-rate escape...

We just finished our escape room. We did not have a pleasant experience. This an exorbitant cost for what we were provided. Clearly, this place is only out for money.

Finding the place took well over 30 minutes. The parking lot was very dark. No other shops were open. The escape room had no outside lights. We drove by the place twice because it did not look like anything in the strip mall was open. When we finally found the place, it was past our start time. We had to go through the lengthy presentation before we could go to the room. But at no time did the person in charge, “Mel”, let us know we were late and our time was being docked.

When we got to the room we were informed we only had 32 minutes in the room. The person in charge “Mel” was very dismissive when we asked about why we were only getting 32 minutes. We of course did not finish the puzzles. Which was very disappointing.

We had 8 people; my wife, our three kids, my brother, elderly parents and myself. At a charge of $30 a person, that came out to $240. Having only 32 minutes, we obviously did not get what we contracted for.

By the way, our time was for 7:30. Clearly Mel just wanted to go home instead of allowing us the hour that we had been promised.

This was incredibly disappointing. I would absolutely not recommend this business. They have no regard for...

We have done escape rooms in 3 different states now, and this one was without a doubt the best escape room experience we have ever had!! We did the Dr. MK Ultra room, which is a 4-star difficulty, and it was actually quite challenging. They used a good variety of different locks and some magnetic releases. There were a lot of different types of puzzles throughout the room, and everyone in our party got to shine by being the one to solve one of them, even the little nugget had a puzzle that was right up her alley.

The best part of the experience was the incredible employee. He was super sweet, and entertained my daughter when he noticed she had lost interest in the puzzles. She complained at one point that she was hungry, so he brought her a package of fruit snacks and a package of goldfish. She noticed that he was able to type messages to us that appeared on the TV, so she requested that he put her name up there, and he immediately obliged.

The escape room we have back home is mostly about finding all the locks, then finding all the keys, words, and numbers, and then playing a matching game. We were super pleased when we discovered this room was much more complex and really challenged us to think outside the box. We also loved all the red herrings. They definitely worked to...