Northwoods Escape Room LLC — Local services in Town of Lincoln

I went with my wife and 3 children, this was our second escape room together up north and we had really enjoyed our first experience. We chose Grandpa's Candy Store escape room. When we arrived, we were shown to a room to watch a video with instructions, the initial impression was it was a kids classroom. Our expectation was that this was a well established escape room and we thought the room would be great. Entering the room, it felt like a kids nursery with most of the props /decorations being cheap and ugly. Colorful plastic bins with hand written words signifying candy ingredients etc... could have been so much better ambience.

There were some really good puzzles, we were stumped for a while, but some of the puzzles were well worn and needed replacement or updating.

What made it an especially poor experience was that although we did request 2 hints during the game, the second hint wasn't relevant to getting further. Then shortly after this, the gamemaster started sending us hints we didn't ask for. Probably about 4 to 5 of them, and we weren't given time to figure it out ourselves. We were finally on the last clue and were working on entering the last combination when he sent that we had completed the room, even though we hadn't gotten the code right. That all took away the enjoyment of completing the room yourself or just completing it.

Additionally, there is usually the after time where your picture is taken, talk about how you did etc... we were brought straight to the door. We were the only ones there and it felt like the employee just wanted to get us out so he could lock up and leave. It was meant to be a fun family time but we ended up leaving stressed and...

This was our first escape room experience so I dont know if I am the best judge. The taxidermy room we did had a 17% success rate. There were 5 of us. 2 parents and our guys 17, 19, 24. We didn't get it completely done but were SO close. One of the puzzles didn't get reset so it threw us off the whole rest of the game because we weren't sure where that one came in. We just figured she would tell us. For that reason I wish she would have extended our time by 5-10 mins because she also came in to ask us about the thing that was open when it shouldn't have been. It just threw us off. But the video before hand to give us all the rules and let us know what was and wasn't a part of the experience was great! The storyline/plot made sense. The hints were helpful but not too much of a give away. Just a great family experience. If I could give it a 4.5 I would because of the snafu but the prep, videos, puzzles, etc were really well done and worth more than...

While spending a week of vacation in Eagle River, my friend and I decided to take our teenaged sons to try to beat an escape room. The choices were Candyshop and Taxidermy, the boys chose Taxidermy. We arrived early and was immediately led back for a short informational video before going to the escape room. Decor was as expected for the experience we chose and we had an hour to get figure it out. Needless to say, we figured out about 33% before time was up. We all loved that it was not easy to figure out. The game master explained the puzzles we didn't solve, which gave us all an ah-ha moment. We look forward to checking out the themese next Sept when we return to Eagle...