Grand Escape: The Lost Maya Temple

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. 

Amazing setting as soon as you enter the room. Fantastic theming continues throughout - probably one of the best sets we've seen. Brilliantly done.

The puzzles however were very hit and miss. We got the usual briefing about not using force etc, however, I would argue that some level of force is required for one of the first tasks. 

The tasks in the second part of the game made absolutely no sense to us whatsoever, we got them by pure luck I think. There was no logic, or explanation as to how to complete the puzzles. 

On reaching the next stage of the room the puzzles made much more sense and we were able to complete these with no trouble. 

Overall, the setting was epic, but the puzzles were baffling. We will do the other rooms there just to see the set of the rooms if nothing else!

This was one of the very few games where I have actually left feeling annoyed and contemplated leaving the room before the end. 

Good points: the set is lovely and you are immersed from the start. There are some really clever puzzles that I have not come across elsewhere. 

Bad points: having had the usual spiel at the beginning about not needing to use force or strength, this is in no way true from an early puzzle which took significant effort when we finally established it was allowed. We did discuss this with the owner at the end, whose response was "well it's obvious you couldn't break those so it's fine" ie our fault for not deducing this. It is very dark throughout (you are allowed to use your mobile phone torch). There was one puzzle that was not working unless you expelled your entire lung capacity repeatedly (again, raised this with the owner who said the tech support is overseas and he would let them know - I take his point that he doesn't want the puzzle to be too easy for large groups but you need to cater for small ones too!). Although the puzzles were clever, there was such limited signposting as to what to do with some of them it was at times obtuse without hints, and some puzzles were rather illogical even by escape room logic. Supposedly when you have done something correctly a noise will sound but often found this did not happen - I presume some elements are manually controlled as we had a few instances where either something released even though we had not finished the puzzle, or it did not when we had done it correctly (as far as we knew) but then said action happened a bit later. We did have a conversation with the owner at the end about how we had not enjoyed this room and he was receptive to feedback, but ultimately I think his priorities (that the games are padlock free and that he has bought the game in and spent money on a nice set) are not what I am looking for when it comes to enjoying an escape room. I think some adjustments in terms of puzzle sensitivity with the set design would help with some of the aforementioned issues. 

What a great game by Grand Escape.

Each room they produce seems to get better and better

This is one of them rooms that has not a single padlock and everything happens with an interaction

However, in this room, we came across, not one but TWO puzzle ideas we have NEVER seen in any room and they were great. 

The level of detail in this room was great and i cannot recommend it highly enough