Escape the Mystery Room — Local services in Town of Watertown

If I could leave no stars, I would. I have done roughly 45 escape rooms and this was by far the worst one. First and foremost, the setup is just awful. It is located in the mall but I have done escape rooms in a shopping mall before and they were far better. These rooms are very low-budget and it shows. They are set up like open office cubicles so you can hear literally everything going on in the rooms around you. They are small, single rooms, with cheap, boring props. You only get 50 minutes to complete the game, instead of the 60 minutes almost every other room gives you. The "game host" did not do a good job laying out the story line of the room to begin with. There is absolutely no flow as far as the clues are concerned. We did Sherlock's Library and literally all of the "clues" are just on unorganized papers that make zero sense. There are no exciting puzzles, no RFID sensors that open secret compartments or doors, just a whole lot of combination locks, some of which give you trouble, even when the correct combo is put in. When you need help, you have to push a button on the door and wait for the only person working to come in and just give you the answer, instead of helping guide you in the right direction, and that could take several minutes. We pushed the button when we had about 10 minutes left and after more than 5 minutes, we just sat down and gave up entirely. This was definitely not worth the $70 we paid for it and I would HIGHLY recommend to anyone looking to do an escape room to avoid this one. Literally drive any distance to try a...

We did the Escape From Alcatraz. Staff was very friendly and everything was very clean. The mystery room lacked the immersive experience that mystery rooms require. First, it's just a small size room with decals or stickers and whatnot on the wall for the theming with very little theming using props. All the rooms share the same ceiling, so our walls did not go the whole way up making you feel you are still in an old department store. When you hit a buzzer for a clue a staff member comes to the door to tell you a clue which also takes you out of the experience of being in the escape room. We are used to escape rooms where, when you ask for a clue, something will come up on a screen or maybe somebody will speak in a speaker but by the employee just coming to the door really takes away from the experience. Not that this is the employee's fault it's just simply how the rooms are designed. It was easy to lose interest because it was just a fairly boring square room with multiple boxes with multiple locks on them so you basically just figure out a bunch of number combinations for an hour. The plot was also not that exciting as well. We would recommend: better lighting, closing in ceiling, suspenseful music, multiple interesting props, variations in tasks and maybe have less escape rooms to choose from but then make the few you have very elaborate with multiple rooms that lead into one another throughout the tasks. We appreciate the small business adding business to the mall and entertainment...

We had a great time at this escape room last weekend. We started with a level 1 room and finished it with some time to spare. It was a good level for our group, which was mostly first-time players. (I have completed a couple escape rooms at another business.)

Then we tried a level 2 room because they offered us 50% off. It was considerably more difficult. We needed to ask for hints several times. The staff was attentive and steered us in the right direction without giving answers away completely. We finished in the nick of time.

The answers to a clue or two in each room seemed a stretch. For example, in one case we had all but one digit to a combination. It turns out we needed to add or multiple some numbers together to get the result. I'm not sure how we were supposed to know that. Though, perhaps this is just my novice skills showing.

Bottom line, I would recommend this place to a friend. If you haven't done an escape room before, give it a try. I think you will have a lot more fun...