Captive Escape Rooms Myrtle Beach — Local services in Myrtle Beach

The best thing about the entire Captive Escape Rooms experience was the staff guy working there. He was funny, and obviously dedicated to his job. If I decide to ever visit there again it will be because he was obviously excited about escape rooms and seemed like a nice guy. But I probably won't go back because Dracula's Library was incredibly disappointing.

There really is no excuse to have a room this poorly designed and staged. The puzzles, instead of servicing the story or helping to build excitement and dramatic tension, were obviously created with an eye towards being easily reproduced and farmed out to each of their locations. The premise and setting of Dracula’s Library offered the opportunity for thematic and interesting puzzles, but instead of that there was cheap decor, bad lighting, and lots of modern locks, some of which had been damaged. Worse, they had little to no signaling whatsoever, making it unintuitive and unpleasant to go from one puzzle to the next. It could have been creepy. It could have been interesting. It could have been a rich experience. It was none of those things.

With the possible exception of a nice chess set and a few paintings, this room certainly didn't feel like it was set in 1862. The clash between modern props and the 1862 setting made everything feel cheap and thrown together. I can forgive modern locks or even cheap UV flashlights, those are just tools of the trade and can make for amazing puzzles, but having the Da Vinci Code on the shelf, battery-powered candles, and a very modern, metal coffin was just too much. The books in the sparse library “collection” may very well have been sourced from a garage sale last weekend. Dracula's Library is the off-brand soda of escape rooms - underfunded and underdeveloped.

The hint system was also remedial, being designed in a way to bleed any errant fun out of the room. This could have been avoided if they'd had a camera system and a PA so they could observe teams during play and throw out a comment when their players get stuck. The hints themselves would have been unnecessary if the puzzles were just signaled better and their clues weren’t quite so impossible to find. The building itself isn’t handicap accessible and this reflects in the game design: several clues would have been completely overlooked if we didn’t have a short, nimble person playing with us, and even then we missed a few because we mistook disassemblable puzzles for shoddy craftsmanship.

One of the biggest issues I had wasn’t even a game-related issue. They required us to surrender our phones - which were to be kept in an unlocked cabinet, in an unsecure room. Which wasn’t constantly staffed. I vigorously objected, and the poor guy behind the counter eventually relented and put tape over my phone cameras, in part because his management wouldn’t pick up the phone when he called for their input.

My recommendation is that you look for better escape room options around the area. However if you must go here for your escape room fix, at least avoid Dracula's Library. I can't speak to the quality of their...

Went here a few weeks back and am still in disbelief at the experience my wife and I had here.

A little backstory, my wife and I consider our selves to be escape room enthusiast, we have been to a least 10 escape rooms so we have an general idea of what makes an escape room a positive experience, it can be broken down into three things.

Immersion (A great escape room should make you feel like you are there in that abandoned cabin or the evil doctor's lab. The story should set the scene for you and your crew.)

Puzzles (The puzzle should offer a considerable challenge while also having all the clues you need located in the room, hints should be readily available to your crew at your request and your time should be displayed on a clock so you are able to manage your time effectively.)

Props (This goes along with the immersion aspect. Everything should be realistic to the scenario, a cheap or out of place prop can instantly take the player out of the game or let them know that the budget of the company is very low. A good room should try to convince you that you are actually there.)

Now looking back at our captive room experience, none of these standards where meet.

Immersion was broken multiple times when the hostess had to come in the room and walk you through the puzzles, instead of using something as an intercom.

The puzzles were challenging but not in the fun brain teaser way but in the sense that they made no logical sense, and when the hostess came into explain it to us we were still confused as to how someone doing this their first time could figure that out, let alone someone who has done many.

The props where very low quality, immediately after getting the lights on ( it starts off dark) you notice how little effort they put into the design of the room, the blood stains look like red paint, they did not look old ( the room was set in the past ) and one of the keys was sitting out in plain sight as if the host forgot to reset it.

In summary, the best part of captive escape rooms was the hostess, she was enthusiastic and was excited to talk with us about the rooms. She definitely sold the room (granted this was her first one). Which leads us to believe that if this your first room you will have fun but if this is your 4th or 3rd, or even you second, there are a lot better escape rooms...

I have done about 6 or 7 escape rooms. This was my first time using this company. We were on vacation and my family loves breakout games. We did Dracula’s puzzle and it was very disappointing. You can’t see the time at all the whole time you’re playing which is frustrating. I didn’t like not knowing how much time was left. I didn’t feel like the story line was strong. The clues didn’t really go with the story. Some of the clues where so hard it wasn’t that fun. One key to a lock wasn’t even hidden. It was just laying out on a table like the forgot to hide it. If you wanted a clue you had to hit a door bell button and wait for the game keeper to come to the room. There was only one person working and multiple games going on. We had to wait 5 minutes after pushing the doorbell for a clue. Also to escape the room you just had to find a golden key that had nothing to do with the story line. Our group had actually escaped but didn’t realize it until we wait about 5 minutes later and hit the doorbell looking for a clue because we didn’t know what to do with the golden key we found. Overall just very disappointed with the whole experience. If this is your first escape room ever it might be fun. But for someone who has done multiple Breakout Games. I was disappointed and would...