Dells Escape Rooms — Attraction in Wisconsin Dells

I have mixed feelings about this. Overall the place seemed clean and well run, but I found it to be a very unsatisfying experience.

Caveats - we had a small group and were in the most difficult room, so it would have been a struggle to finish either way (we did not “escape”). But I had one significant issue with the setup that, to me, made the game unnecessarily more difficult instead of letting the challenge stand on its own.

The room was very, VERY dark with just a faint overhead candelabra. Our group was given two small flashlights to use for the four people present, in a room for up to 12 people. It wasn’t clear to me how many flashlights a larger group would get. This essentially meant that half the time, you literally couldn’t do anything because it was too hard to read or see in any meaningful way. On top of that, the majority of the clues involved things written very small, and you needed those clues to activate other clues…and you literally couldn’t look at them both at once unless you commandeered both flashlights and kept the rest of your group from doing anything. For me, personally, this felt like a cheap trick to make everything take longer and not something that enhanced the experience in any way.

I also found the hints given to us by the game master confusing, and when one clearly pointed us on the wrong direction in the last ten minutes of the game, they did not clarify until we only had about a minute left. There were other points I thought they should have stepped in as well, like when we accidentally inserted a crucial piece backwards so it wouldn’t work, and we couldn’t get it out to fix it for fear of breaking something, and it would have been really helpful to get more direction there. Finally we got it out after 20+ minutes but it set us behind the entire remainder of the game.

Overall this was a very mixed experience for me. I would possibly go back and try a different room, but it would need to be really great. Usually I leave escape rooms hyped up at the clever construction, but this all felt more tedious to me. They did give us coupons for 20% our next time at the end which I really appreciated, although we were on vacation in the area and I don’t know when we will be there next. In the future, I would make sure my group starts with an easier...

The escape rooms here ALWAYS have broken puzzles and they don’t tell you about it or they don’t realize the puzzle isn’t working until you’ve tried it for ten minutes then they come into the room to say it’s broken.

The last time we went we also had a game master that had no clue what their job was and they took us to the room and were like ok here you go.

We’ve done dozens of escape rooms around the country and escape nearly every time. This place rates incredibly lower on our scale than anything we’ve done before. They have the potential to be really good rooms but the execution and maintenance is below acceptable. The staff is subpar. We’ve still managed to complete one of the two rooms we’ve done here (and they were shocked we got it so quickly) but we won’t be going back. Since we live in the area we thought we’d give them one more chance after the first horrible experience and about a year had passed since our first horrible experience. They have not changed their quality.

Even though the other rooms have great descriptions and we’d love to try them - we won’t fall for it again. It’s a...

Puzzles didn't flow, lots of "do not touch" objects in the room added confusion, there were a number of "red herrings" in the room that were meant to distract you from what was the task at hand. My team didn't enjoy the room, I won't be back, and I don't recommend. Also, the bathroom wasn't clean and the toilet seat was super loose (I almost fell off). The sink appeared to be falling off the wall and there was also a weird/gross smell to the building.

*Edit after response: I have done more than 150 rooms, I would not describe the room as realistic or complex. There were multiple locks opened by numbers just written somewhere, without any additional solving. The problem with "do not touch" or "do not open" signs is that it makes you afraid to interact with things in the space. The whole place smelled weird, I noticed it immediately when we walked in the building (it wasn't the actual room). As far as the bathroom goes, these are major maintenance issues and I had already used the bathroom, so fixing them wasn't going to change my experience. A second bathroom is already out of order in...