The Heist

We did The Heist as a group of 8. Four of us had done one other room (at a different establishment), and this was the first escape room for the other four.

We found the whole experience lacking on so many levels. In short, this room fell way short of expectations. It was medium-fun, but not excellent.

Here are our top 20 complaints on this room:

There weren't any real puzzles. No logic. No solving. Just looking at stuff and figuring out which item gave you the combination for which lock.

There were WAY TOO MANY LOCKS/COMBINATIONS/PASSWORDS!!!!!

The room was tiny - way too small for 8 people.

The room was hot and stuffy.

There weren't enough parallel puzzle paths to keep everyone busy. Most of our group stood around while one person worked on the one puzzle that was holding everything up.

The room was too dark to see anything. The flashlights they provided were useless. Everyone had to use their cell phone flashlights the whole time.

The theme was lacking - the puzzles didn't match the theme of the room. The decorating was not at all realistic.

The 'final' exit door was surprising, but in a bad way.

The decor was cheap.

There were several puzzles that required colors, but the lighting was too dim to make out the colors.

We had to do trial and error on too many things.

There were two puzzles that used colors, and there were two other puzzles that provided colors but didn't use them. No information was given to indicate which color items went with which puzzle.

On several of the puzzles, there was no indication of which solution matched up with which puzzle.

The huge metapuzzle at the end requires you to get a bunch of numbers using a bunch of items throughout the room. This puzzle was broken and gave the wrong numbers.

The box puzzle took us 25 minutes to solve, even with the game master trying to explain the solution over the walkie-talkie.

We had to receive 6 hints and still were 20 minutes short of escaping.

We tried to ask for a hint several times with the walkie talkie, but we didn't get any response. We even tried waving at the camera to get the game master's attention; again no response. After the game was over, we realized we were pushing the wrong button on the walkie talkie.

There was no sense of how close we were to escaping because of the false endings.

The games were scheduled way too close together to give the teams adequate time to debrief. We felt like we were kicked out of the room before we could take it all in.

The lobby was way too crowded with people going in and out at the same time. It seems like it would run a lot smoother if the start times were staggered.

Jeremy DyeApril 27, 2021