The second escape room we did in Wichita, Kansas with my two brothers was Escapology. It was much better than The Room. Escapology is one of the largest escape room chains in the country. They develop their rooms at their headquarters in Nashville, Tennessee, and when they perfect a room, they put them all over the country.
I've been to a couple of the Escapology locations, and they always have great lobbies, introduction videos, booking and check-in procedures, and friendly staff. Your game master (the person who gives you hints) is not usually the same person that shows you to your room. I don't really like that because information gets repeated, and you don't really get to know your game master.
This location in located in The Alley, a giant entertainment center with an arcade, a bar/restaurant, a bowling alley, go carts, etc. The lobby of the escape room is really cool, and the waver signing process was simple. The employees were nice, but they seemed a little overwhelmed. I'm not sure why because there weren't many people there.
My biggest tip for these rooms is make sure you pay attention to and remember what is in an area of the room when you move on to a new area and thoroughly search everything.
We did four escape rooms at this location: Budapest Express, Mansion Murder, Under Pressure, and Cuban Crisis. I'll review each of them here:
Budapest Express
Mike's Difficulty Rating: 3 (out of 5)
Their Difficulty Rating: 8.5 (out of 10)
This was a good room with great immersion and decor. Like most rooms, it had a mix of generation one (traditional) locks and generation two (electronic) locks, but I prefer to see more generation two locks. There were a couple clever twists in this room, but most of the puzzles/locks will be very familiar to people who have done a lot of rooms. I won't give too much away, but the ending was disappointing. There were only three of us doing the room, and a fourth person would have been helpful in this room because the ending requires people to divide and conquer.
We completed it in about 55 minutes with two hints.
Mansion Murder
Mike's Difficulty Rating: 2 (out of 5)
Their Difficulty Rating: 9 (out of 10)
Mansion Murder was definitely my favorite room at Escapology. I loved it. There are some very creative puzzles and locks in this room. Even though the decor and immersiveness weren't as impressive as Budapest Express, the creativity of the generation two puzzles made this a very good room. Even though I'm used to doing rooms with two or three people, like Budapest Express, this room would have helped to have a fourth person in this room because there were times you had to split up.
We completed it in about 40 minutes with three hints.
Under Pressure
Mike's Difficulty Rating: 3 (out of 5)
Their Difficulty Rating: 9 (out of 10)
I really enjoyed Under Pressure. It was a unique, fun, and constant theme. The game master told us that it is their hardest room, but it didn't seem that hard to me. I think he was saying it's hard because there are a lot of puzzles to solve. It was difficult, but it is definitely doable for a group that is good with organization. The immersion/decor was awesome in this room. My only critique of this room is a critique I have of most of the rooms at Escapology: All of their rooms have three spaced, but the third space is almost always underutilized. When you get to the third space, you'll usually realize there isn't much to do in there. There were definitely a few good generation two locks/puzzles, but most of the locks were generation one locks.
We completed it in about 50 minutes with two hints.
Cuban Crisis
Mike's Difficulty Rating: 2 (out of 5)
Their Difficulty Rating: 7.5 (out of 10)
Cuban Crisis was definitely the worst room at this location. There weren't really any cool locks to unlock. There was two or three cool puzzles, but they weren't unique. I've seen puzzles like them in other rooms. The theme really didn't have much to do with the puzzles, and the decor/immersion was absolutely terrible. It wasn't an easy room because there were some puzzles that did not clearly connect to a lock. Because the theme was inconsistent, it took some trial and error just to figure out which puzzle was intended to give us a solution to which lock. Don't do this room.
We completed it in about 45 minutes with one hint.
