K.Bunniii ◊【ESCAPE ROOM】MYSTERY ROOM ♡ Pandemic
Mystery Room: Pandemic
| 52 W Beaver Creek Rd, unit 16&17 Richmond Hill, ON | |
| 60 Minutes | |
| 4-10 players | |
| $22.00 per person | |
| Unlimited hints | |
| Mystery Room | |
| 905-707-5829 |
Taking a short break from our Freeing Series as I want to write a review on our most recent escape adventure at Mystery Room. We took our adventure to their newest(?) location at Richmond Hill last night. Given the fact that we are such addicts when I discovered there was a Richmond Hill location, it was almost an instant go. Background story, we've actually been to the their Downsview location before and in all honestly it was a low budget escape facility. It was not necessarily a bad escape facility, but of course compared to the higher end ones it did lack in terms of tech and props. However, with that being let me share with you our experience!
Pre-Room Experience: I honestly thought their location was the old Esc-It location! I still remember when escape rooms first came out and the level of sketchiness was so high in my opinion. Their Richmond Hill location is located right on West Beaver Creek. Location was great for us as half the time we grab dinner on Hwy 7 and it's much closer than other escape facility. Once again it gave off the sketchy vibe as we pulled into their facility. There were no car which made it even much more sketchy haha - We seem to have been the only booking they had all night. As we enter, the lobby was small but there was another room full of board games and more tables. I'm not too sure if it's because this location is new or what not but it was pretty much dead. The staff were friendly, but it did seem like he was nervous as we were the only guests haha. Oh, here's the catch - before arriving we were told that each player needed to have a fully charged phone. This was such an interesting call for us because as you know most escape facility don't allow cell phones. Before we entered the room - we were all asked to download an app. Here's where it gets interesting....
Room Quality: Continuing from our pre-room experience. The theme to this room was a virus breakout and we all needed to survive and escape. As I stated earlier we were all asked to download an app. As we enter the room, we were told to connect to their wifi and the app. We each created an IGN and basically this was our "health" status. Basically how it all worked - the app indicated our status with each a health bar, hunger bar, injury bar and thirst bar. We needed to maintain each bar in order to survive. Throughout the rooms there were resources that we needed to find to keep us all alive. Once resources were found there were QR codes on them which we then scan through the app. Resources that were scanned will increase our status keeping us alive. Cool! Putting this app to the side the room itself was alright - not the best but not too bad. Props weren't as high end in compared to other escape places. The design of the rooms somewhat lacked in my opinion. For example the last room was pretty much just an empty room with very minimal props. I would say they could easily do so much more if more money was put into it. I can see the potential. In other words, it was a budget room.
Pre-Room Experience: I honestly thought their location was the old Esc-It location! I still remember when escape rooms first came out and the level of sketchiness was so high in my opinion. Their Richmond Hill location is located right on West Beaver Creek. Location was great for us as half the time we grab dinner on Hwy 7 and it's much closer than other escape facility. Once again it gave off the sketchy vibe as we pulled into their facility. There were no car which made it even much more sketchy haha - We seem to have been the only booking they had all night. As we enter, the lobby was small but there was another room full of board games and more tables. I'm not too sure if it's because this location is new or what not but it was pretty much dead. The staff were friendly, but it did seem like he was nervous as we were the only guests haha. Oh, here's the catch - before arriving we were told that each player needed to have a fully charged phone. This was such an interesting call for us because as you know most escape facility don't allow cell phones. Before we entered the room - we were all asked to download an app. Here's where it gets interesting....
Room Quality: Continuing from our pre-room experience. The theme to this room was a virus breakout and we all needed to survive and escape. As I stated earlier we were all asked to download an app. As we enter the room, we were told to connect to their wifi and the app. We each created an IGN and basically this was our "health" status. Basically how it all worked - the app indicated our status with each a health bar, hunger bar, injury bar and thirst bar. We needed to maintain each bar in order to survive. Throughout the rooms there were resources that we needed to find to keep us all alive. Once resources were found there were QR codes on them which we then scan through the app. Resources that were scanned will increase our status keeping us alive. Cool! Putting this app to the side the room itself was alright - not the best but not too bad. Props weren't as high end in compared to other escape places. The design of the rooms somewhat lacked in my opinion. For example the last room was pretty much just an empty room with very minimal props. I would say they could easily do so much more if more money was put into it. I can see the potential. In other words, it was a budget room.
Puzzle Design: There were a few downfalls in terms of puzzle design. The whole app experience was quite fresh and interesting to all of us, but mid-way through, half my team gave up on "surviving". This was because maintaining the status of your health was so distracting to us. Half our team were decoding the puzzles while I was trying to feed everyone food and water. The purpose of it also seems very unnecessary as mid-game one player ended up dying but still proceeded with the game. There was also difficulty in terms of scanning our resources. Some resources were empty, which wasted a lot of our time trying to scan another resources. One player's phone barely scanned anything and by the time it did it was already too late. In terms of their puzzles, it wasn't too bad. Nothing impossible and it all did connect. I would say though a lot of my time was spent trying to keep everyone alive so I did miss out on some puzzles.
Overall: Not bad I would say. I can definitely see potential for them if they invest a little bit more into their rooms. The whole concept of the room was fresh and new. Even though with some distraction and glitches the room did keep us all entertained and we didn't feel bored at all. I would say the biggest downfall I found was the app having to be open the whole time. I didn't have enough time to figure out how to keep my iPhone screen on the whole time so I had to keep tapping the screen to make sure my phone didn't sleep. This made it super hard to do anything else! With that to the side, this room was very spacious. So if you are looking to go with more teammates you will not feel crowded. Oh, also if you don't have a cell phone or if your phone dies they do provide you with chargers and also spare phones. Overall, we had fun and it was a very interesting room. However, if you are looking for higher end rooms with "wow-ing" tech, you won't be able to find it here.
Happy Escaping!
