Room 81 - November 14, 2019

Atlanta, GA: Escape The Room

The News Room

Clue Master Andrew - Success

Room 82 - November 14, 2019

Atlanta, GA: Escape The Room

The Apartment

Clue Masters Johnathan and Matthew - Fail

We hated this room because it made no common sense.  We were trapped in an apartment with no way except with the keys. 

Room 83 - November 16, 2019

Alpharetta, GA: Urban Escape Games

Trapped in Time

GM Juan- Success

Trapped in Time at Urban Escape games was a very good room with fairly sequential puzzles. Two people have a disadvantage because you need to make a human chain at one point. You are given a helpful artifact if you are only two folks. This had a good story – basically, the head scientist had traveled into some time and was trapped. Our mission was to get him back. There were good electronics that were kind of cool and helped make the room.

Room 84 - November 17, 2019

Alpharetta, GA: Urban Escape Games

FBI Investigation

GM Juan- Success

Well, we have a “few” more days to our Europe trip, so why not practice what we will be doing for the next 3 weeks? The FBI Investigation was a good room helped by a really friendly and helpful Game Master Juan. Our new thing is to take pics with our game masters (or game guides or clue masters) and they seem to enjoy doing that with us. Well, no one has said no yet.

This room was Crime Mob themed with loads of Italian names thrown about and starts in a pizzeria. There are more rooms of course but what was really cool was the technology. There were THREE laptops, the Dark Web, and cutting the correct wire (is it the blue or the green wire?) to stop a bomb. We had about 3 minutes left but were sweating bullets at the end.

There was one glitch with one of the items, but it was to OUR benefit so we didn’t mind.

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Room 85 November 20, 2019

Paris, France: Borderlive Concepts

The Live Thriller

GM Alias Paul Gambale - Fail

This is by far the best “room” I have ever played. Except it’s not a “room” so it isn’t really fair to compare it to the others. It’s an EXPERIENCE!!! There are not enough superlatives in my book to do it justice.

The story revolves around a serial killer known as the Mannequin Man. He abducts his victims and then substitutes mannequins for them, arranged in the manner that the real victims died.

Now we did this at 9:30 PM on a cold, dark night in Paris so that already set the atmosphere. We started on a corner of Paris and waited for the Inspector to show up. He didn’t approach us – we had to walk up to him and ask if he was the inspector. He took us to his info room and told us that the police had run out of leads and had turned to civilians, such as ourselves, newly arrived from Atlanta with NO CLUE about Paris, to assist them.

After figuring out a few things, we left the room and went to the NEXT location by following a random (not so random) stranger through the streets of Paris. WHAT A WORKOUT!!! In that building, which was very dark and had extremely narrow stairs where yours truly’s butt barely fit, we discovered a mannequin and had to identify who the victim was.

That led us to ANOTHER building where we lost vital minutes twice because of mistranslation of words from French to English. Of course, had we been smarter, we would have figured it out.

I only say this because we literally ran out of time by ONE SECOND! We missed out saving the victim, the killer attacked us and killed us.

No, no, no – just kidding, but he did try to attack us through a chain link fence and that was REALLY, REALLY TERRIFYING. And awesomely awesome and exhilarating.

There are 4 different endings to the experience (I can’t just call it a room) and though ours was not the best outcome, it wasn’t the worst either. But still not good.

Would I do it again? Absolutely. Would I go to Paris just to do it? Well, that’s why we went to Paris once – why NOT?

Many other escape rooms are exciting and have cool effects but there was NOTHING like Live Thriller Paris. If you get a chance to do so, it is absolutely worth the money. 

Speaking of money, the cost for this room for just the two of us was 190 Euros, so over $200.  Worth it, since it was not just an hour, but about 2.5 hours of nail-biting entertainment.

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Rooms 86 & 87 - November 21, 2019

Biel/Bienne, Switzerland: Mastermind Escape Games

Magic School and Secret of the Monks

GM Alex and Success on both

When I figured out we were going to Biel/Bienne, I decided to look for escape room places and found this one. Though they have the same name as Rose’s place of employment in Atlanta, they are not part of the same chain. When we arrived, we gave them 3 shirts from Rose’s location (and they are cool shirts by the way).

We were booked for 3 rooms but because of the long travel day and getting little sleep the day before, we were pooped out, so just did 2 rooms.

This place was EXTREMELY hard to find because it was in the basement of a building that required a bunch of weaving through corridors and down weird stairs with doors opening in on them. This place definitely has no walk-ins. Looking at commercial success factors, I think this place will fail unless they move, no matter how good their games. Also, they mainly are open on the weekends. They made an exception for us which I greatly appreciated.

Room 86 was The Magic School, a kind of Harry Potter themed room without going into copyright infringement. Wands, house elves, spell casting (yes, I cast a spell!) and some interesting books – LOTS OF BOOKS. There were a few glitchy items especially the planets that had to be ranked in a certain order. As usual though, the game master made the difference. He, Alex, was really awesome, friendly and gave us loads of hints.

Room 87 was the The Secret of the Monks, the better of the 2. The back story is that there is a monk killing other monks and he needs to be found. The room was awesomelingly dark and spooky and we only had candles (electric mind you) to see by. In this room, there is a confessional booth and you had to confess a sin. I went first and said something silly like creating progeny (I know, I know, not really nice with Rose right there!) and got a rebuke that that wasn’t a sin. Rose said she would try and said “I’m gay” and immediately another secret passage opened to the final room. This room was well done and once again, the game master was freakin’ awesome. Only beef I had was having to crawl because my knees don’t care for my upper body, but Tylenol and Motrin and perhaps a little Morphine will help.

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Rooms 88 & 89 - November 22, 2019

Munich, Germany: One Hour Left

Out of Control and Psychosis

GM Murat and Success on both

Doing Psychosis at One Hour Left Escape Games was to me the highlight of our trip to Munich. This room not only had a great storyline, but the pieces all fell together so beautifully and the tech was awesome too.

There were dark rooms (with just a single light to crawl towards), jump scares and some terrifying video (like this crazy lady walking towards you in a mirror reflection – shades of Freddy Kruger and the Ring). I have to rank this room as my number 2, perhaps tied with The Ruins from The Escape Games and actually enjoyable as Live Thriller, though sadly, I think nothing will top that.

Out of Control was about a person shot dead at the airport and us having to find out what he had been doing at the airport with a fake id in a restricted zone. This room was good too and had some real hand/eye coordination challenges.

I would heartily recommend both of these rooms, but especially Psychosis.

Finally, kudos to the game master Murat who was really awesome and helped us out a lot when we were in trouble.

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Room 90 - November 23, 2019

Brussels, Belgium: Enygma Brussels

Sherlocked

GM Pia - Success

I mainly picked Enygma because I saw they had Sherlocked and Sherlock Holmes is one of my favorites when ever since age 9 or 10 I read everything and the Annotated Sherlock Holmes:

Though today I wouldn’t have the patience to read each annotation, in those days I was easily distracted. Yeah, right, like I’m not so distracted easily today, but I’d probably get bored with the details.

Anyway, the story is that Sherlock is out of town and Moriarty is going to destroy 5 cities. You have to figure out how to stop him.

There were some really good things about the room but without the game master’s help we couldn’t have done it. Others of course I’m sure could have. We were also very tired and Rose was starting to get sick but she was a brave little trooper and kept going.

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