Escape Room @Grant — Attraction in Tucson

Please don't waste your money here. My friend and I booked a weekend trip to do the majority of the escape rooms in Tucson and this one was by far the worst. Our first red flag happened when we initially called to schedule. The gentleman that booked us wouldn't allow us to book three consecutive hours/rooms, because he needed to take his dinner break from 6-7pm (which is prime escape room time), so we ended up just having to wait around for an hour after our first room. When we first arrived tonight, we tried to forget about the offputting scheduling experience, and hold onto high hopes. Those hopes quickly disappeared when the game master demanded that we complete separate waivers for all three rooms we were doing, but wouldn't allow us to complete them all at the same time. We had to complete them between rooms and then show him the proof, which made zero sense. I could have overlooked that, had the rest of the experience made up for it. However, we've done over 100 escape rooms combined, typically just the two of us, and we somehow didn't escape from 2 out of the 3 rooms here. In all the years we've been doing escape rooms, we haven't escaped from a total of 3, before today. The clues we received were extremely cryptic and took multiple minutes to receive, eating away at our time one clue at a time. On two occasions, the game master entered the room and in an extremely condescending manner pointed out something obvious we had missed. He easily could have told us to examine the item closer over the monitor or given us instructions on how to use a compass. I don't know about you, but I've never had a use for a compass in the real world, nor have I seen many in other escape rooms. It was extremely demeaning and demoralizing. We did miss a few obvious things, but instead of guiding us to them, he just watched us stand around, without any sort of direction. Some of the puzzles were decent, but knowing which items were associated with which puzzles was difficult to figure out. Additionally, the letters and numbers on some of the locks were so worn down, they were difficult to read. Drawers would often pop open and we had no idea, because they didn't make a loud enough noise or open far enough, but our game master never guided us to those things until we asked for a clue.... I need a clue on a puzzle I'm not understanding, not when your equipment fails or isn't designed properly. The final straw for me, occured while we were in the final room; by this point, it was very apparent we were frustrated and instead of helping, so we could have an enjoyable experience, our game master sent a message over the screen demanding we put the locks in the designated basket. We had missed a clue under the basket, so I'm assuming that's why he guided us there, but there was a much more direct, kinder way to get us there. Overall, it just felt like our game master was hoping we would fail and actively working against us, instead...

The staff member running the game was super nice and did a great job getting in character for the storyline, hence the extra star for this review. However, having done many escape rooms, the Hangover Room was just really really poorly designed. We were told nobody has ever completed it without hints, and I can see why. Many puzzles are extremely non-intuitive and easy to break. One essentially required outside knowledge of the movie the Hangover to solve. They were extremely fast to give us unsolicited clues, which took away from the fun of discovering game elements on our own (although in hindsight I can see this was necessary due to design problems). Finally, the room and props felt dirty.

For me, part of the fun of an escape room is the satisfaction of solving the puzzle on my own. This wasn’t possible for nearly any puzzle here due to poor clueing, overly complex design, or in some cases excessively open-ended clueing (leaving too many possible variations based on how you interpret clues). We will not be coming back, and I would steer experienced escape room...

This was a HUGE waste of money. We’ve done soooo many escape rooms and have escaped every single one. This was the worst, by far. None of the clues or puzzles made any sense, and some of the items needed to solve the puzzles were worn down to the point of not being able to read them. Clues from the GM were given in riddles that made even LESS sense than the puzzles themselves. Another review here from six months ago said they thought these reviews were fake, and I have to think the same myself. The rooms are also bland and boring and old, and it was very hot and stuffy inside. The GM seemed annoyed that we were even there, (it was empty, at 2pm on a Saturday) which honestly set us up for a bad time from the start. Don’t spend your money here. Fox in a Box and Ace of Escape are so much better and the rooms are delightfully decorated with lots of detail. We’ve done all the rooms at both places and escaped them all, so this one...