Lock & Key Escape Room — Local services in Buffalo

My girlfriend and I have gone with two different groups of friends to Lock & Key. We completed the Escape From Pirate’s Cove last year, and last night we completed The Vampire's Tomb. (I highly recommend The Vampire's Tomb before they change the room, if you get a chance.) For the latter, we were assisted by a very accommodating gentleman (Jared). We were the last group of the day, and due to traffic and bad weather - were late by 10+ minutes; completely our fault, but Jared was so nice to not let it affect our time. He said we were the last group, and no one would be in after us - but still he didn't have to do that, considering that would make him leave for home 10+ minutes later. I really enjoy Lock & Key for their consideration of the puzzles. The set design of the rooms is appropriately adequate. If I had to guess - they put more emphasis on the puzzles than on the atmosphere (i.e. that is not to say they lack in it). I respect them greatly for their challenges, because I feel the puzzles and challenges are challenging enough, but not ridiculous, illogical, or out of the theme of the room. I have been to other escape rooms where the challenges were out of place, or sometimes unfair to the players to search every square inch of the space. It's the difference between mind teasers and I Spy books; and I feel Lock & Key does a great job of putting focus on the former, and giving credit to the players for actually figuring out mental puzzles. Silly thing: if I had one complaint about The Vampire's Tomb room, it'd only be in the first room, you're in the study of a suspected vampire - and on one of the shelves, there is a bottle of "Holy Water". The geek inside of me said, "What kind of vampire keeps something so foul to their being, so near to them?". :) I hope you're able to overcome such a trivial thing like that, like we were, to see the overall excellent quality of a place of entertainment and mind teasers. I highly recommend anyone to give Lock...

I've been to a few escape rooms but the puzzles in this one were the best. You really had to think outside the box to use the clues. We had a great bunch of intelligent people working on the clues and were able to escape with 3 minutes to spare. But we worked hard and as quick as possible. There was more to it than just finding the items you needed to solve the puzzle. You had to wrack your brain and pull it in odd directions to figure out how to actually use the found items. I think this made it a bit different than some other escape rooms. There are two rooms to choose from, Pirate's Cove and Vampire's Lair. I chose to do the Vampire's Lair. It involved coffins, skulls, bones, pentagrams and other "dark" items. Numbers, colors, words were all used in the different puzzles. It was interesting and a lot of fun. The rooms were spacious and clean. The facility was a little hard to find....down an alley on the side of a building then down to the basement. The owners were helpful and very welcoming. They gave us good instructions and a few helpful hints during the hunt. I would recommend this...

My family was in from out of, obviously I wanted them to have a great time. This was not my cup of tea. However, I’m still giving it 5 stars. One of my sisters, my nephew and one of my nieces had an absolute blast!! I don’t know how these 3 did it. They’re freaks of nature. It was so fun watching them enjoy themselves. On the other hand, dad, other sister, other niece and myself still have NO CLUE what happened in that hour 😂. I found it to be psychologically fascinating to see how different our brains work. The 3 of that were totally lost, work in the medical/legal fields. My sister who was cracking the case works in an elementary school with special needs kids, niece and nephew and in high school. We all clearly have different strengths in areas of intelligence/ways we think, which was really cool to learn.

I have to also say the owner was LOVELY!! We were 15 mins late and they still allowed us to come. She spent a lot of time with us before, and after. If your brain is wired to figure out puzzles involving letters, numbers and, symbols, this will be right up...