Grand Escape

There were some original puzzles with a strong design. Some elements can feel a little disjointed or illogical, depending on your approach to the puzzles, which can be irritating because the clues were not always helpful in redirecting you. But all things considered, it was well executed. 

The big reveal at the end, while I appreciate the effort and cost that went into the room, did feel a little underwhelming. Perhaps our game master talked so much about it before the game that I imagined something else. 

There were some really fun elements in this room. For a start, the Holy Grail felt like an original theme in the way it was handled. Then it was nice to see a lot of self-built mechanical puzzles that actually worked smoothly and added to the fun. 

A lot of tongue-in-cheek puzzles brought a lot of personality to the room, and it was really great to see an independent escape room create and build something so unique. It was a lovely experience that I recommended strongly to others in 2019. 

Just going off ETR's prompts, I would say this room was immersive, but due to some rather lackluster hosting, no opening video and no music, it lacked atmosphere. There's a screen in the room, so we were waiting for something to set us off, but it never came. The screen is only for the teeny-tiny clock and for the host to share clues.

This game tries to balance hi-tech with the more traditional padlock style rooms, but it didn't hit that balance for me. Off the top of my head, I count 8 traditional padlocks and 2 digital pads. The 2 digital locks didn't even indicate how many digits we needed. With the added fear that they lock out, you would try a number everywhere else first. This got very boring. If I additionally add up the more hi-tech puzzles, there must have been at least 13 puzzles to complete, and remember we didn't get to see the whole game - we failed before we could see it all.

The room is pretty, but underwhelming in it's unoriginality and the lack of paranormal presence. The name over sells it. I was expecting more.

Unfortunately, I didn't find this game great value for money, so we won't be spending a further £81 to come back and finish the game. It's just not worth it. There are other games I've played twice and enjoyed both times, but this won't be one of them. 

It wasn't funny. We didn't find it very clever. It just felt like a lot of time was wasted, and this felt intentional by design; Grand Escape wants to have the hardest room in Birmingham, which I think is a respectable goal to have, but to do it by wasting people's time does not provide value for money or fun. It was just frustrating. Taking the handles off draws, so you don't know which are draws and which are props, is not fun. It's a wind up.

We're also accustomed to setting things aside once we've used them, but in this room there's one item that has to be used at least 3 times. This meant we were finding and tackling puzzles before we had all the information or all the tools or access to complete them. This wasted a huge majority of our time. Watching us do this, I would expect a Games Master to step in and say leave that alone for now. They allowed us to wander off on huge tangents, which shouldn't even be possible if the room is supposed to be linear. There were very few surprises and no jumps. Very little to get excited about. We were too bogged down with the paperwork. Off the top of my head I recall at least 9 laminated sheets, making it feel like a print out and do-at-home mystery.

The room and puzzles were strongly story-driven, which is a huge plus, but it felt like CSI without the CSI. It was only intense in the sense that we were up against the clock, but nothing about the story or atmosphere imposed a sense of doom or need to rush. There was nothing epic or magical about this room. It was just rather lackluster, so if you're a traditionalist, maybe this is the room for you.

Everything worked, to our knowledge, so that's a big plus point, but you could see it was dated, with wall paper peeling away and padlocks hard to read because the numbers were worn off. This, plus the dim light in the room, made entering codes very difficult. 

On the whole we found the room and story logical, but frustrating. I like when a puzzle opens something or reveals something; there's an immediate payoff to your genius and encourages you forward. I don't like completing the puzzle and then figuring out where the code goes. We’d figure out a combination and then have to go around the room trying it on multiple locks until we found the right lock. The frustration supersedes the buzz of completing the puzzle, so you never feel the payoff or enjoyment of achieving anything. It just wasn't the room for me. It wasn't very fun. More of a grind. 

Erghh. We desperately wanted this to be good but the hosting is just utterly awful. When the game master doesn’t care about the experience it really shows. The puzzles were not logical and hints are not hints, they just tell you the solution which is really disappointing. Sage to say we won’t be back to Grand Escapes 

Simply put - don’t play this. The hosting was shambolic. No welcome, no briefing, nothing.

Walked us to the room and said 1 hour to escape - no back story as to what we were looking for or actually supposed to be doing.

If this was our first ever escape room we would probably never do one again.

The games master was manually unlocking puzzles as we clearly had not completed certain parts correctly but all of a sudden a door would open.

We did escape - although we didn’t know it! After the finish there was no talking or enthusiasm from the host and no offer of a the obligatory team photo. 

So much potential but a clear lack of passion from the company.

A pretty standard room with a couple of clever ideas. These ideas, however, were let down with either broken (or bafflingly poor) tech. 

You’re also provided with torches, one of which is broken. Looking at older reviews this has been raised in the past, and is still an issue now.

Overall a nice room, and fun to play, but nothing to write home about.

The good parts: Good build quality and nice visual design. It sells the Mayan, Indiana Jones feel nicely. And a couple of puzzles were decent and imaginative.

The bad parts: While the room is themed nicely, the puzzles are kind of assorted, not as integrated into the theming as they could be, and mostly don't require much insight to solve. Two puzzles in particular really did our heads in. One could use subtly better cluing in order to give you the push in the right direction - I'm not saying it's impossible to make the leap you need to without that, but what you were supposed to notice was pretty slight. The other was easy to work out, but because the technology involved is either glitchy or far too hard to activate, we were left wandering around for some five to ten minutes wondering what else could have been involved. Eventually a hint confirmed that we were right but the tech was a nightmare, and we were able to move forwards. 

A couple of torches we were given were lovely to have - nothing worse than an unnecessarily dark room, and it's fun to have torches to play with. Sadly one of them was underpowered to the point of uselessness, and the other kept turning itself off for apparently no reason. Perhaps it was low on battery? Either way, it was a big frustration, and our vocal complaints were met by silence. You get the feeling that the reason they ask you to do a silly pose to ask for hints is because they're not paying you any attention otherwise. 

There's potential here, because the room has real plus points. But it could use some significant finessing to say the least, as could the hosting.