Captive Escape Rooms Downtown Toronto — Local services in Toronto

I'm quite conflicted on how to rate this place. The staff are wonderful and I loved their enthusiasm, the room itself was quite clean and the props worked. I'm also very thankful for the extra time we were given to get through it. I would have given it 5 stars if I were rating it on that alone...but this is an escape room, and the games are what we come for.

When it comes to the room and puzzles itself, it was very very confusing, and I've done at least 5-6 rooms in the past. I'm not going to spoil the room or clues or anything, but there were just so many possibilities and so many options and so many things that could mislead you, that you would have to rely on hints if you actually wanted to move forward. For example, there are shelves of books, and we're supposed to somehow know to look for a fake book that was hidden behind those books, and to find another book with a clue in it, without anything telling us which book to look for. It would take too much time to look through each book individually, moreso if you don't even know what you're looking for, or if the books are relevant at all.

For the combination locks, we may have figured out the numbers, but there was no indication on the order, so I would spend time just going through all possibilities with those 3 or 4 digits until it worked. Sometimes, I just had to go through all the numbers cause the clue given didn't work. We were given coordinates to maps, but you just could never know what you're supposed to be looking for as nothing was really in that spot. We had a number lock in the room, but there were only names of cities nearby.

When our time was up, they gave us 10 more minutes, and we were ready and willing to walk out when they kicked us out, but I guess no one else was after us (midweek afternoon), so again, I'm thankful that they allowed us to spend our time on it so we got our money's worth (we only started the 2nd out of 4 rooms when time was up)....but out of all the clues, I feel like the only things we were able to figure out on our own correctly was finding a few hidden keys, unscrambling letters to figure out the word for a letter lock, and realizing the hidden directions in the notes for the directional lock. Maybe with more people (there were only 3 of us), but at the same time, the mini rooms are too small for a big group to all come in and work on stuff.

I would be interested to see their other rooms, but if it's a similar set up to that one, I don't think I'd care for it. Maybe it's great for people who like to dig and sift through stuff and have the patience, but there wasn't much of a flow or story otherwise, and just too much to figure out in an...

Thank you to an absolutely amazing team at the Captive Escape Room in Downtown Toronto for hosting us for our first escape room!!!

First of all I wanted to mention even before we arrived we appreciated the staff. I booked our tickets for Sunday, due to being new to the city we missed our time slot, I called Captive Escape Rooms asking to exchange our times, we were granted this and planned it for the following day. But due to my horrible timing and being drained from walking around the city, we ended up missing it the second time as well, only calling a handful of minutes prior to our time slot. Yet they still allowed us to exchange and rebook our times for the next day. I was dreading calling for the second time and the staff joked with me and made me comfortable and reassured.

When we arrived we saw a simple entrance and when we opened the door we were presented with a red lighted staircase, definitely got us intrigued before we even started! When we entered the foyer of the escape room we were greeted with pleasant smiles and a warm greeting. We mentioned how it was our first time doing an escape room but have watched/played all the escape room movies/games we could find over the years. The staff was quite eager to explain and set us up! We did the 13 DOORS escape room. Amazing room, NO SPOILERS HERE but they will give you a briefcase with a few items to start your questioning and you get to start trying to open all the 13 doors! We would of made it out in time but we got a little stuck with the actual physical locks in front of us, just make sure you jimmy (shake) and pull the lock a little to make sure that you open them properly. We ended up wasting 20 minutes not realizing we didn’t set the lock correctly. We opened most of the doors but didn’t quite get them all. The Staff helped when we needed hints or reassurance on the room. When we came to the end of our 60 minutes and they allowed us to continue for an extra 15 minutes before the next group arrived. The staff asked if we wanted to know what happened and the ending but we asked not to know! We plan on going back and finishing it another day!

Thank you again for all your patience, help & overall support allowing us to have an amazing first experience! Can’t wait for next time and won’t ever forget the...

Updated review from today June 24 - The 13 doors room was good but the staff didn't care to explain at the beginning about how to open the lock boxes inside the doors. The room is hot as hell and someone could faint from the heat as there is no AC.

Also, I had a very horrible experience with the staff when I tried to give them my 2$ off per person coupon. I got misinformed twice by the staff, once they said I could redeem the coupon on the phone and not the website and the second time I got told that I should have handed over the coupon before the game. Please educate your staff on providing the right information to customers and on being punctual with starting the games. I did get a call the next day from the location manager apologizing for the problem and mentioning that the $12 will be credited back to me.

Older review: May 6 - Highly recommended if you're looking for a fun activity in the city! I booked the Dracula's Library escape room for my birthday for my group of 5 friends, on Captive's website, which was an easy process. We reached there about 5 mins before our booking time and were greeted by the staff and led to our room by Rochelle (the staff member had the same name as me!). Rochelle explained how to work the navigation lock (big red lock) and then gave an intro to the room in a very themed style (dark room and Rochelle was holding a lit candle while explaining the backstory). Plus she said the main door was unlocked at all times so we could just leave if we wanted to. Rochelle then left the room and we (the absolute novices) began our search for clues and keys. I found it hard (such a novice!) so we requested hints about 6 times throughout the experience. We were at the last clue when out time was up so the staff graciously let us take 10 more mins to figure it out. And we did figure it out and escaped!

The overall experience was fun and we didn't realize how quickly the hour went by. A big thank you to the staff for being so prompt in their response to our pleas for hints. While they didn't reveal the answers they definitely helped us understand how to solve...