Elmhurst Escape Room — Local services in Elmhurst

Re: Summer Beach room.

Oof. I went with my 8 and 5 year old, in the hopes to show them a great room. This room was recommended when I mentioned their ages. I've played about 25-30 rooms. tl/dr: lots of room issues, much better rooms elsewhere for same price

So, upon entering, there's no WOW factor, artistically/theme-wise. Bare walls (aside from the giant maze which is one wall), but nothing that says, "beach day!". On 2 separate occasions in the first 5 minutes, I had to radio in and ask, "shouldn't this be locked?", so the GM came in and put a lock on and plugged in the electricity. Without going into spoiler details of the puzzles, it's tough to explain my frustrations with this room. The maze: if you make a mistake, there's no way to "reset" the maze without retracing your path back to the beginning. Allow a way to start at the beginning. The map: has been written on with sharpie and gives the clues away. Needs a new reprinted map (and perhaps a dry erase marker instead of Sharpie?) The geometry: those shapes are not those shapes. Make the shapes cleaner (by adjusting the cork? different board? lose grid labelling) Special ink needs to be reapplied and/or stronger light in the crawlspace, nearly impossible to see on the pieces. Pros: GM was very nice, very helpful, and gave us some extra time on the back end. And candy!

Unfortunately, I probably won't be back if the other rooms are like this. Gave it a shot, but left pretty disappointed.

(happy to edit this to remove any spoiler-y comments, just wanted...

Sherlock Holmes room is not really an escape room. It's barely Sherlock Holmes themed but should be categorized as EASY not "Standard". I can't imagine there's a 40% solve rate on this one. From previous reviews it used to be called "WORDS" and it might as well still be. If you go here, try one of the other rooms as they sound somewhat better.

I went as an adult with four kids ages 8 to 16. Maybe that's why it was set up easier and they enjoyed it but it was their first one. This is the weakest escape room I've seen out of at least 3 others I have done. The only reason it took us nearly the full time is that we misheard two of the clues from the gamemaster.

That said, Rose was kind and a good gamemaster who served us some good hints based on where we were...

My husband and I had a great time today! It was our first time at Elmhurst Escape Room, but we've done about a dozen escape rooms in different cities.

We did the Save Sherlock! room, which I think is a more recent refresh of the word room. It was a fun theme! I agree with the standard level of difficulty (on the easier side). I also loved that it's family friendly because I've done some scary escape rooms before, and that wasn't my cup of tea. It was nice for two people, and it would be great for families with young children. We definitely will be back to do the other rooms! I'm particularly excited about the...