Breakout Cincinnati - Casino Royale Room - an escape room experience (4/16/16)

[thegajone]

This past Saturday was my first ever experience with an escape room. My wife and I and 3 other couples got together and it was the first time for everyone else as well. We did a little research and saw that there are 4 or 5 other companies that do escape rooms in greater Cincinnati, but Breakout Cincinnati in Hyde Park seemed to be the most highly regarded. We booked it about 5 weeks ago and this was the first Saturday they had any availability for (and it was a fairly early time at 4:20 PM), so I assume it is very popular, especially on the weekends. It was certainly busy that day as well. For those who have never done an escape room or aren't sure what it entails, basically you are locked in a room and have to piece together a series of clues and puzzles to eventually come up with the code to unlock the door and escape the room.

I believe they have 4 different rooms, and the one we did was their Casino Royale room. Being a regular casino patron, I loved the theming of our room and our scenario. Like I said I've never tried an escape room before so I don't have anything to compare it to, but I will say that all 8 of us thought it was fantastic and an absolute blast. We escaped the room with only 26 seconds remaining! The host said that roughly 30% of groups make it out of their rooms in time. Our particular room was of "moderate" difficulty according to our host. It seemed pretty linear to me -- i.e. one clue led you to the next which led you to the next, etc. without much back- tracking, though I've heard other rooms are not nearly as linear. While some were tougher to decipher than others, I thought all of our clues and puzzles were fair with 1 exception. Just 1 of the elements (it was kind of a puzzle I guess; it's tough to describe without giving away any spoilers) was pretty obscure and made you really think outside the box, but outside of that I thought the difficulty was perfectly on point. Now you do have a "game master" that watches over you the entire time that you can ask for help 3 separate times, so that helped tremendously. If it weren't for that, I'm pretty sure we'd have never figured out the obscure element.

Overall, like I said before, all 8 of us loved it and are already working on finding a day that works for all of us so we can try one of their other rooms. The one negative is the cost; if you bring a full group of 8, the cost is $28 per person; if you have fewer than 8 then they charge you $35 per person. That's an awful lot for 1 hour of entertainment, but it sure was fun. I'd recommend it to anyone who is looking to try something "different" for a night out.

[Thrill_Biscuit]

I'll be doing something like this in Tucson next week. I wasn't sure what my friend was talking about when she told me about it, but this helped me figure out what these things are, so now I'm psyched!

[FoF96"]

We've done this same room in Louisville, it was a blast!