A Great Escape at Gardner Village — Attraction in West Jordan

room is quite the contradiction. 5 stars for set design, 1 star for puzzle design. It makes me sad to see such a high visual budget put into the hands of such a poor puzzle master.

Any escape room designer can tell you that there is one cardinal rule to follow for all escape rooms, no math tests. Yet there are not one, but two, long puzzles in this room that come right off of the GRE grad school entrance exams. Puzzles which involve a LOT of writing to work out on paper, which in our case was not even provided. And one puzzle which I'm pretty sure involves a different set of science reference materials than were ultimately chosen for the room.

Further complicating issues is that most of the puzzles involve quite a bit of interaction with computer screens (another rare puzzle design mistake), which were buggy. Meaning we couldn't figure out the puzzle because the computer was just programed poorly.

Which isn't to say that all the puzzles were bad, some were quiet good, and the place looks great. Some of the gimmicks are really cool and unique. This room has the potential to be one of the best in the state, if there was a major puzzle overhaul on the bad ones.

I should also note that this location does have some of the very few children's escape rooms around. Including some meant to be played in 20 minutes. I haven't checked them out personally, but if you were out shopping in the area with kids that seems like it would be a great...

I’ve had the opportunity to have completed roughly 15 escape rooms in Utah and a handful of others outside of the state and this was one of my least favorite. I was so excited given the positive reviews and Harry Potter theme but left feeling let down.

Positives: The room was nicely decorated. The theme was fun.

Negatives: There was not a clear end objective. It was more along the lines of “you need to accomplish XY & maybe Z.” So I asked when we would know we beat the room and the game master just shrugged and said “you will know.” Granted it was obvious but not satisfying or magical.

The some clues were misleading and the some hints unhelpful. At the end I asked if anyone was able to solve a particular puzzle without a hint and I was told “no.” Which I was not surprised by because even after we had the answer it did not make sense.

The room is small, one of the smallest I have been in. We had 7 people in our party and it felt crowded. There also did not seem to be enough things to do or solve for that large of a group. At times I felt in the way or un-useful. Keep in mind 60% of the escape rooms I have done has been with a group of 6 or more.

Conclusion: If you have a small group (3-5) you could give this a try and enjoy it, but maybe come in with your expectations lower so you don’t want away...

The escape room itself was really fun. It was done well, challenging, and enjoyable. There were a couple times when we were doing things right, and the equipment malfunctioned. The man working there helped us, but it did dig into some of our 60 minute time. It would've been nice to have been given extra time to account for that.

Our biggest problem was that we had to wait 45 minutes after our scheduled appointment to get started because the people before us had been late to their appointment. I wish they had some sort of policy that if you were so late you would need to reschedule so it doesn't push the people after you back. Or, if we were told it would be a 45 minute wait (we were told it would only be a 15-20 minute wait), I would've happily tried a different room that was open. Also, right when the man helping us was supposed to get us in, a walk-in group came, and he got them set up and in before us.

I suspect our experience was out of the norm because the escape room really was well done and it did seem to be well run. I would be willing to give it...