SwordfishJ 1
06 Jan 2022
My wife and I came to play the pirate adventure. It was the second escape room I have *ever* done. Our monitor, Carter, was great. Very nice, very friendly, and fun. But then everything went horribly wrong.
Basically, there's one big puzzle you need to complete in order to escape the room. It's required pieces are scattered through a number of other puzzles.
We got stuck on a puzzle (for convenience I'll call it puzzle 7). Meanwhile, puzzle 8 was almost complete. It incorporated magnetic name plates. Previous puzzles were also solved with magnets. Again, this being the second time I've ever done an escape room, and the first time I've faced multiple magnetic puzzles, I wondered if magnets from a previous puzzle solution would "solve" puzzle 8.
I picked up magnets from a previous puzzle, said out loud "I wonder if this will work" and stuck them on puzzle 8. It did work. Puzzle 8 popped open.
Carter immediately hopped on the intercom and said "Technically that's cheating, but you still need other pieces [for the main puzzle]."
I immediately apologized and put the new pieces down so we could come back to them once we solved puzzle 7 where we were stuck. I thought it was over. Boy was I wrong.
A couple minutes later, another employee, Kayla, flung the door of the room open, barged in and began berating us for cheating and being cheaters. She picked up the pieces I'd set down and was not near or touching, since we'd returned to puzzle 7, and put them back in their box. Then took the magnets off puzzle 8 and began cleaning up other older puzzles before eventually storming out the way she'd come in.
It completely destroyed the experience, and most importantly was completely unnecessary.
Again, we could not solve the room's big puzzle until we had the pieces from puzzle 7 AND puzzle 8. Carter had already handled the situation, but for some reason Kayla felt it necessary to burst in, so she could huff, berate us, and slam objects around.
Seriously disappointing.
If you do visit Extreme Escape, know that you must solve their puzzles in a singular, specific, linear way, and if you find yourself wondering how "smart" the puzzles are at identifying their solution pieces, you're a cheater having bad wrong fun and should be ashamed of yourself.
