Colonial Escape Room — Attraction in Virginia

Surprisingly busy place during spring break in (MD/VA). My son (10 yr old) and I took advantage of the groupon and had the 8:30 booking of Samurai. We got paired with a family from NoVa who had a similar aged son who played 3 times and adults/sister who were newbies. I've played extensively and so has my son. 6 makes it pretty crowded but everyone had input which was good. We solved the room at 40 minutes. Room was laid out well, rules were given succinctly and props were very simple but effective. Our operator Will is exceptional in covering key points to do/not do without being longwinded, and his friendliness was appreciated. Room decoration/ambiance was decent, and slight music background was appreciated. It was a bit too dark for my taste with my slightly failing eyesight (mid 40's), and if I didn't occasionally use my own flashlight or the other father didn't have his cell phone light, we wouldn't have been able to differentiate or read many of the small letters/dimly lit colors which look the same in the dark.

Some of the props could use some fixing to the correct colors, but it was enjoyable. There was no tech in the room which was nice, a lot of the type of clues are old hat for many of us experienced folks, but the usage of a few commonly used methods did hang us up for a bit. The groupon rate made this a great deal and even at $25 I would consider it $ well spent. If time allows, I'll be back tomorrow for Blackbeard at which time I'll update this review again.

Played Blackbeard with just me and a ten year old. We needed help, a modest amount of it. Lol. A few assumptions just weren't jumping out at me. This is definitely a tougher room and does better with more people. I'd say about three highly experienced, four moderate is a good number in this smaller room. This way everyone is working on other things or able to switch if stumped. I wouldn't suggest this for beginners at all.

Well thought out room, great decorations and attention to detail shows. Talked to the owner (who operated) in depth who clearly takes great pride in his work which is a welcome change from some business only oriented owners.

For full disclosure, I work and design rooms at an escape game company...

I want to preface by saying you must come play all the rooms here, we have played all three, and each was better than the last!

First we did Chesapeake bay butcher, and for my horror loving friends this is the room for you! It’s as if a haunted house and escape room had a baby in the best way possible. I do not want to spoil anything for this one- but if you love a good spook factor come play this room!

The stars of the show for me though were their other single-room adventures, CyberPunked and Blackbeard’s Cabin! Cyberpunk was the easier of the two, but it is up there as one of my favorite escape rooms I have ever done! From the theming to the puzzles everything was on-point! My favorite of the two though was black beard’s- and this was a hard room! The room consists of four puzzles which enable you to unlock the ONLY lock in the whole room to escape. I have never done a room like this before, but I can say it is most likely my favorite in terms of puzzles. Please don’t let these being single-rooms deceive you because they are some of the best I have ever done! I will let you know they are slightly smaller in terms of physical space, so I would recommend groups of 2-4 for these ones!

Also a shout out to our amazing game masters Alexa and another gentleman whom I didn’t grab the name of. They were both very kind and made the whole experience amazing!

10/10 recommend this place to folks! They are...

Staff was absolutely fantastic.

I've done over a dozen escape rooms; they're one of my favorite activities. This one, however, was more frustrating than enjoyable. I LOVE a challenge. Most Escape Rooms require the use i creativity and logic to move from one clue to the next, often reverting back to the previous clues and information to answer the next puzzle in order to move forward. This one required very little creative thinking. It was all numbers and math oriented. For some people, that's awesome and works out well. However, I've never been any good with math. I'm great with actual puzzles, but if you sit me down to do an algebra problem, then I'll be lost in the dark. This room (Blackbeard's) required a lot of work on pencil and paper, and not a lot of actually digging around and finding things. It felt like more of a homework assignment than something that I'd pay $25 to do. We got out of the room, but not without having to ask for a LOT of clues. There were four "big puzzles" you had to solve in the room in order to get out. It didn't feel particularly cohesive and it wasn't a fun experience, in my opinion. I'd like to maybe try one of their other rooms, but I was so frustrated by this room... I don't see myself spending my money to come back and solve a bunch of different math problems again.

The three stars are for the staff; they were kind...