Red Door Escape Room — Local services in San Diego

BEWARE if you arrive for a later room - employee does not want to work late and will lie / won't let you in so he can get home early.

Had a horrible experience last night. Me and my partner drove for 40 minutes to the location on Fashion Valley. We were celebrating a special day. Upon checking their website, they had 3 rooms available: Fair Game, Once Upon a Time, and The Gift. Their times were 10:30, 10:40, and 10:50. We arrived at 10:15 and upon walking in, the man at the front door, who said his name was "Bob" said the rooms were booked. We are talking about 3 rooms being booked within the moment I parked the car (was looking at their website trying to decide which one to do) and walking inside Red Door escape room. He said "the two rooms we had left were booked just now, Once Upon a time and Fair Game". I proceeded to ask "what about The gift? it says it is available online" he replied " just got booked as well" and immediately was "booked" on the website. Mind you: we stayed outside and NO ONE was around, NO ONE arrived. We already thought it was weird that all 3 rooms were booked in a matter of 2 minutes. We walked back in and ask "hey, if they don't show up, can we book the room?" he said " I need to wait 20 minutes for them", we replied " OK, after 20 minutes if they are not here, can we take the room?", and he proceeded telling us he wouldn't recommend because we would only have 40 minutes instead of 1 hour. We said we didn't mind and would wait. Then, from " I do not recommend" he literally said he wouldn't let us in and started telling us how he had to make sure his team would get home early because they were working all day. Went as far as ranting about / complaining about lunch time and overworking when that literally isn't our problem. This is a job you are being paid to do. I'm sure you were aware of the hours of operation when you first took the job. We were trying to go to the escape room at 10:30 in which the people who supposedly booked didn't show. We said we would wait for the 20 minutes and would be happy to start at 10:50 - mind you: while according to him other people booked the other rooms set at 10:40 and 10:50 and would finish at 11:40 and 11:50 while we were willing to start the room at 10:50 for 40 minutes and be done by 11:30. It really makes no sense how because of us his team would not be able to go home early if the other rooms that were supposed to finish even later were booked. It was clear to us that the employee was trying to leave early and bluntly lied to us. We were there within the hours of operation - which you're getting paid to do your job. The lack of honesty was appalling. NO one arrived for either of the 3 rooms he said were booked and I saw AVAILABLE online literally upon entering their place. I asked his name and he said "Bob" which I also think was another lie. Working at the fashion valley location Thursday 6/13/2024 heavier built man, with long dark hair, wearing glasses. Horrible service and a...

This was my second time at this location, and it was amazing!! My friends and I did "The Confinement" - it's their hardest room and definitely lived up to the hype!! As a super jumpy and scared person, I thought it was a really nice level of fear within the room. The ambiance was pretty eery and there were some creepy noises being played over the speakers, and the only jumpscares were loud banging on doors and things opening, which they do tell you ahead of time. So nobody will touch you or even pop out to scare you which is great because I would've definitely pissed myself. I've done about 5 escape rooms and this one was super creative in the way they used clues and puzzles. Felt like you could apply some typical escape room rules and formulas to it but there were lots of tricky aspects that made us use up a good amount of hints lol (thank goodness they're unlimited, we tired our game master OUTTTT with the hints lol). Speaking of our game master, we had Faith and she was absolutely AMAZINGGGG!! I don't ever really even write Google reviews but I had to for my girl Faith because she was so fun and made us have an incredible time!! From the get go, she was very energetic and matched our vibe perfectly and answered all 10 thousand of our questions. Her hair was also bomb so I already knew we were in good hands. Once in the room, she gave us perfect hints whenever we asked for them and had great humor with the way that she was responding! Now even though Imma get her when I catch her for scaring the s* out of us with the window bang, I still loved having her as a game master and in the future, hope to see her again!! Overall amazing experience, will definitely be back again!! One thing I'd say though, and this is probably a corporate thing, but I feel like the 20% discount thing could be reworked a bit. Right now, they offer 20% right after you finish the escape room but you have to book right then and there to get it and it lasts for a year. I get the idea of "Oh they just finished having fun, they'd wanna do it again!!" but I feel kinda the opposite. I feel like it'd be better to offer a 20% coupon via email or something and have it expire within 3 months or so. Right after I do an escape room, I feel like I JUST spent money and I shouldn't spend more. I feel like if you send it over email, it gives people time to miss it and think back to it and then feel like they should book it within the 3 month window. Also the only thing I'd say about the Confinement is that the final puzzle with the lights and the mirrors is lowkey a lil faulty, queen Faith had to actually come in and help us finish it because we had the right idea and knew what to do but just could nottt get those mirrors to work properly lol. Thanks again for a great time!!

TLDR: Amazing time, Confinement great room, Faith amazing team member give her a raise...

This was my 7th Red Door experience, the first time at this location, and it was my worst experience out of them all unfortunately.

2 stars only for the front desk clerk and the room itself. The man up front was very friendly and extremely understanding of our disappointment at the end. He let us know he would let management know of our situation.

We did The Gift room and the room itself was super fun! We were breezing through the room for the most part however there was once instance where we were truly stuck. We had opted in for random clues if they noticed we were having trouble and nothing. No big deal, we decided to just ask for a clue. Rang the bell… nothing. Rang again after a few minutes… nothing. Tried again… nothing. We even spoke out loud for help thinking maybe their doorbell was broken and nothing. Eventually we figured out the next lock on our own but I was frustrated that the team didn’t acknowledged our attempts for a clue… like at all. Ran into another similar situation where we were stuck a little bit later and same thing happened. Absolutely no response. At this point I was frustrated and considered just leaving the room to alert someone. Me and my partner were talking out loud about the fact we were stuck and still nothing. After trying everything we could think of for one of the parts, I finally said HELLO? A little bit louder. I explained we had been asking for clues with no one responding and it was at that point we finally had a clue pop up. We only had about 15 minutes left in the room at this point. So it was kind of like what’s the point at this point, you guys clearly weren’t watching us.

We ended up finishing the room with one clue given and the clue wasn’t even that helpful as we had already figured it out by the time it came. The girl who came into our room to congratulate us was not the same game master who introduced us to the room. The girl who came had a bit of an attitude at first, honestly probably irritated at the fact I had to basically raise my voice (myself clearly irritated) that staff has ignored us for 45 minutes.

We took our pic and left but overall this experience left a bad taste. Not to mention that when we first started the room, it wasn’t fully set and a door that was meant to be the last one, was unlocked. So we went into the room not knowing this and started looking through things when the original game master came in, said sorry that the lock sometimes doesn’t work and we shouldn’t be in there, told us to go back to the first room and said she would restart our time. Spoiling the fact it was the last room and just rolled one of the items we had under the door to find again later.

The room was fun but it was clear our original “game master” Layla straight up...