Mind Head Escapes — Local services in Greensboro

Edit 5/31/22: I'm withdrawing the point about the safe per the owner's reply because the clue being referenced likely does explain the unlock pattern. Despite this, I maintain that the light level in the room, the dying batteries/low lumens of the handheld blacklight, and the ridiculously short cord on the UV spotlight all prevented the UV puzzle from being discoverable while the sun is out. I also maintain that the existence of RFID tags should have been mentioned prior to the game as the website clearly claims there is no specialized knowledge required, and this was not the case. The RFID keys are not identifiable as such, and I've attached a photo of the ones used so you can make up your own mind as to the legitimacy of that point.

Went here with my wife and 2 friends. Before we even went to the room I received a call from the staff asking us to come at 5:30 instead of the 7:30 booking I reserved so the on-duty staff could leave work early. We acquiesced because we had no reason not to.

For context, my wife and I have done more than 15 escape rooms of varying difficulty including several with a win rate below 30% and have only failed one, ever.

I fear that escape room newbies would try the heist room, fail, and assume their inexperience is the determinate factor. The reality of the situation was that at least 3 of the puzzles do not have a logical solution. Spoilers ahead.

A blacklight puzzle that requires you to charge up some glow-in-the-dark paint without knowing it's there. The paint isn't visible under the blacklight because there's a massive window in the room that doesn't have anything over it except thin paper.

A wine bottle puzzle that requires you to measure the height of liquid in the bottles without a ruler. Additionally, two bottles with adjacent number values were supposed to have water levels an inch apart, but they were separated by a quarter of an inch. We verified this three separate times.

There are RFID keys in the endgame that are completely unidentifiable as keys. The explanation we received was that they corresponded to a little colored blotch of paint on a dresser with tons of scratches and paint defects.

On top of the puzzles that aren't designed to be solved, the room's construction was very low effort. There was a magnetic lock that we tried to solve correctly several times. Our game master came in to solve the lock and struggled to do so, rolling the magnet around and trying it at different angles for a while before it finally popped open. Nothing was labeled so it would be difficult (if not impossible) to open without knowing the magnet was polarity sensitive. ̶A̶d̶d̶i̶t̶i̶o̶n̶a̶l̶l̶y̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶r̶e̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶b̶i̶n̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶s̶a̶f̶e̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶r̶o̶o̶m̶,̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶l̶a̶i̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶u̶n̶l̶o̶c̶k̶ ̶p̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶n̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶a̶f̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶u̶l̶d̶ ̶b̶e̶.̶ ̶F̶o̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶o̶s̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶o̶ ̶d̶o̶n̶'̶t̶ ̶k̶n̶o̶w̶,̶ ̶r̶o̶t̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶t̶u̶m̶b̶l̶e̶r̶ ̶l̶o̶c̶k̶s̶ ̶v̶a̶r̶y̶ ̶d̶r̶a̶m̶a̶t̶i̶c̶a̶l̶l̶y̶ ̶b̶e̶t̶w̶e̶e̶n̶ ̶s̶a̶f̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶u̶f̶a̶c̶t̶u̶r̶e̶r̶s̶,̶ ̶a̶s̶ ̶d̶o̶e̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶m̶e̶a̶n̶s̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶u̶n̶l̶o̶c̶k̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶m̶.̶ ̶I̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶l̶s̶o̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶e̶x̶p̶l̶a̶i̶n̶e̶d̶ ̶h̶o̶w̶ ̶m̶a̶n̶y̶ ̶d̶i̶g̶i̶t̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶a̶f̶e̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶b̶i̶n̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶,̶ ̶w̶h̶i̶c̶h̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶m̶p̶o̶r̶t̶a̶n̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶u̶s̶e̶ ̶l̶o̶n̶g̶e̶r̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶b̶i̶n̶a̶t̶i̶o̶n̶s̶ ̶h̶a̶v̶e̶ ̶m̶o̶r̶e̶ ̶d̶e̶t̶a̶i̶l̶e̶d̶ ̶u̶n̶l̶o̶c̶k̶ ̶p̶a̶t̶t̶e̶r̶n̶s̶.̶

I try to avoid writing negative reviews, but this is possibly the worst escape room we have experienced. I hope others will avoid making the same...

This review will be mixed. We had some issues with our visit but we had a good time, in spite of them. We had a reservation to do the Sherlock room, but we were told right before the reservation time that some damage had been done to the room, so we could switch to another room, which was not a problem. I completely understand that things like this happen. But we also had issues being let in the building as no one came to the locked door to let us in for some time (it was below freezing outside), even after lots of knocking and then a call to ask why no one would let us in. I was told that someone would be down shortly to let us in. Ten minutes later, we were still waiting in the cold and I had to text to ask what was going on. I ended up asking if we should just wait in the car and wait for a text. Some time later, the rest of our party arrived and we put in another call asking for an update. Eventually we got in the building. It's a cool space, no doubt. And I loved that there were puzzles in the lobby to keep people occupied until it was game time. Anthony was our game master and very nice. The only issue I had is that he constantly pulled his mask down to talk to us. We all arrived masked because we're all concerned about viral exposure, which is why we choose activities like escape rooms because there are few people and we can limit our exposure while still enjoying some fun. It completely goes against the entire point of wearing a mask if you keep pulling it down to talk. You might as well not be wearing one. Please don't do that. We can understand you just fine, I promise. On to the room. The game was "The Heist". The game play was fun and the puzzles were interesting; however, this room was not properly cleared out of clues that belonged to prior rooms. There are a ton of leftovers that will leave you wasting time trying to figure out how they could possibly be a part of the puzzles you are working on. If you are doing this room, ignore the following: the dragonflies under the mantel, the arrows on the floor, the writing inside the big cabinet, the black light words on the walls, and the number on the room divider. None of these belong to this room. That's a lot. These aren't red herrings. This is just not cleaning up. A small pot of paint would easily fix all of these. I haven't seen anyone do this at other Room 5280s and as a big escape room fan, I found it to be extremely frustrating. We did three at the Seattle location last month and they were brilliant! This experience in the Greensboro location...

The staff were all friendly, but the experience as a whole was terrible. We had reserved a spot for The Pharoah's Curse. Upon arriving, we were told the room was broken and couldn't be played. I would have appreciated a call letting us know so we could reschedule when the room was fixed. Since we had already driven 40 minutes in bad weather, we decided to do the only other room they had available: The Heist.

The theme of the room is awful. You're supposed to be robbing a millionaire, but the room is dilapidated, containing random thrift store cabinets, a couple of safes, and a few pieces of random decor. It's also a bit goofy that the police are taking 60 minutes to arrive and that you can't get out of the room (didn't we break in?).

The puzzles, unfortunately, were even worse. None of them tied into the theme at all. I won't spoil anything, but one involves a deck of cards. After examining the deck, we determined there were exactly 3 cards missing. We interpreted this as a clue, but it wasn't - they had just lost 3 cards. There are multiple points in the game where you will have items and waste time trying to figure out their relevance and how to use them only to find out that you needed additional items that show up later. The progression path is very wonky. Midway through the game, we still had 5 locks to solve, and only 2 items to use. We could not figure out how either item needed to be used. After we had run out of time, the host informed us that neither item was going to help us and our true roadblock was that there was a clue that we had never found at all. And to find that clue, we had to do something that we didn't even consider doing because multiple escape rooms we had been to elsewhere explicitly warned against this type of action as part of their "you're not gonna need to break anything or do anything that requires more than a child's amount of strength or do this or that" intro. Admittedly, Room 5280 did not forbid this action in their introduction, but it was very frustrating. It felt like this room was from the very early days of escape rooms before they had worked out the kinks. It needs...