Room 111 – Escape from Alcatraz at Houdini’s Escape Rooms with Games Master James – Success – 12/5/2019

James, the Game Master, was mean. He told us if we disturbed Clint, the other prisoner in the room, he would get upset and then we would have to spoon with him to calm him down. Or so we were told.

With about 15 minutes left, we finally disturbed him and found we didn’t have to spoon with him. Oh well, didn’t cost us too much. We finished with 5 minutes to spare. James told us that other customers would either immediately investigate Clint or leave him to the end like we did.

If you go to a prison break room and they have a toilet, that’s usually the exit of the cell. This one didn’t have a toilet, but it did have a sink which had a very interesting way of unlocking it to open it up.

The next room was the electric chair room which had a bunch of switches to set in a specific order. We actually had to have someone sit in the chair.

The final room was the warden’s office where there were a bunch of interesting tech built into the desk.

The only weak part of this room was that at the end, we get a call from the governor and are pardoned. However, the story line was that we had to gather the evidence to show we were innocent which we never did. In fact, the “evidence” we collected was almost impossible to read. Perhaps that was the whole point

Almost the best prison escape room we’ve done – Cell 0 was the best so far at X Escape in Marietta. I usually don’t like Alcatraz or prison break rooms because they tend to be very much the same and originally I hadn’t booked this, but Escape from Jurassic Island instead, however, that was too far away and would have lasted 90 minutes and we were strapped for time.  They luckily let us switch the booking to this room (and venue, where we already happened to be.)

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Room 112 – Vienna - Crime Runners - Going Underground – with best friend Peter and Game Master Ulli – success – 12/8/2019

This ranks as on the top two level of rooms. First place is still held by Paris Live Thriller and Amsterdam Catacombs but there is a series of rooms that I would rank as level 2.

Incredibly immersive, this room starts in a tobacconist shop. The story is that there have been tremors below and this is the way in. The thought is that there is a bomb from WW2.

This room then turns into a mine shaft with intricate puzzles and soon gets even better. We were whooping with fun towards the end.

Since this is a post not widely nor wildly shared, I will give more details. Also, unless you go to Vienna or are in Vienna, these spoilers won’t matter. What I do love is the story line and the tech that they had for it.

As I said above, you enter in a tobacconist’s shop. These are classic stores that sell tobacco but they predated it to about the 50’s or 60’s. There were a bunch of old cigarette boxes and you needed to put 3 in the correct order to open a secret door to an elevator. This elevator took you down (not really, but pretend) to another room that had a cage. We got the cage open and there was a door that needed a key which was attached to a chain inside a cabinet we opened.

Once inside there, we were in a mine tunnel which at one point had a fake explosion going off with smoke and noise. Really cool!

This opened ANOTHER room up which had aliens in big plastic holders. 4 of them were there but only 3 were filled – one was broken open. The aliens were the classic looking ones:

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Rooms 113, 114, and 115 – Vienna - Crime Runners Trilogy – with friend Peter and Excellent Games Master Lukas – Success, Success, Fail – 12/8/2019

I booked these rooms because it intrigued me to have a 3 part room. Each room can be done individually, but better in sequence.

The first was The Congressman where There is a corrupt congressman who disappeared and you try to figure out what he did.

In Crime Scene, there is a murdered body outline and you have to figure out who got killed, by whole, with which weapon and the motive.

Finally in Patient Zero, you have to obtain the virus from the laboratory where the Congressman started it all.

Unfortunately, we failed the third room but Games Master Lukas was so nice.

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Room 117 – Marietta - Project Express - Planet Express – with Abi, Nathan, and Tim – awesome Game Master Hanna – success – 1/4/2020

I had Escape Room withdrawal.  I hadn’t played an Escape Room since 12/14 and that was a mini game. As soon as the catheter came out, I booked this room.

Unfortunately, my body didn’t want to participate though my brain worked pretty well. I couldn’t squeeze down into the hidden room so I let the young ‘uns do it. Also they had 2 gaming chairs dressed up as spaceship seats so I sat down and took advantage of that during the game.

This was a pretty good room but not the best at Project Escape. That’s reserved for the Nautilus room. The puzzles were good but like Rose says, I’m spoiled now.

We had Hanna as our GM again  - we had last had her as a GM for Saw (Room B) in April, 2019 (Room 24).  We loved her then and we loved having her again this time. 

I felt the story was lame though it was ok. One of the things I’ve realized from the European rooms is that puzzles should contribute to the game, not be sideline puzzles – this room seemed to have a lot of puzzles that did not contribute to the room though some definitely did.

The story is that aliens were found or landed on earth and that the earth would be destroyed in an hour unless we got the spaceship operational again. The end of the game was anti-climactic. The tech was okay but a piece of it was broken causing red herrings to be created because that tech was disabled. We wasted time trying to figure out what those things did.

Anyway, it’s a level 3 room. You can read my summary here of what I consider levels 1 and 2.

Room 118 – Marietta - The Escapery – le Feu with Nathan and Game Master Felix – Success – 2/22/2020

Another new room in an existing venue.  This was a single room with a stage. Our Game Master Felix was awesome and the room was pretty good, but confusing and required musical knowledge (more than I had – Felix had to come in and help me).

I was so glad to see a new room at the Escapery, one of my favorite escape room venues. We had done 4 of their rooms – 2 successfully, 1 failure, and one which we actually debated that we had really won it, but they said we lost. This new room is called “Le Feu” which means the fire in French.

The plot is that it’s during a war (probably WWII) in a cabaret/bar in Paris. There was a bomb dropped in the area outside and the rubble has blocked the door. We have one hour of generator power. Luckily the owner has built a secret passage and all we have to do is find it before we have to sit in the dark and drink all the booze and wait to be rescued and have our stomachs pumped.

The room had somewhat linear puzzles but needed several to be done at once to solve some of the puzzles – so it was linear/metalinear. It was a little confusing, especially with having to have outside knowledge (music theory) and perhaps dance (totally lost on that one). We were fortunate to have an excellent Game Master who came into the room to help us because otherwise we would have never completed the room.

I love Escapery rooms but this one was not as brilliant as the others even though it was good. Puzzles were somewhat longish but teamwork was absolutely needed. There were three of us, one on the puzzle, one on a translation item, and another on the chalkboard. More folks might have helped. We had no pride and asked for lots of hints.