ESCAPE ROOM REVIEW – THE QUICK AND DIRTY

Play if… you have some time to kill and have a Groupon, or have a thing for watches.

Avoid if… you are claustrophobic.

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THE BASICS

Omescape DC: LOCATION CLOSED

Address: 2406 18th Street NW, Washington, DC 20009 (click address for Google Map)

Contact and Website: 202-644-0825
http://omescapedc.com

The Room – Room Omega: ROOM CLOSED

Description (from the company website): Professor Stanley, known for his theory of time travel, disappeared inside his own office three days ago. His students said he was about to publish new findings on multiple time dimensions. As his closest friend, you’ve decided to find out the truth of Professor Stanley’s mysterious disappearance. Pay attention to any clues related to time, otherwise the same thing could happen to you…

Difficulty (1-10): 6/10

Time Limit: 60 minutes

Cost: $27.99 + tax per person

Identifier: R1

Party Size: Up to 8

Staging Area: The lobby is up a flight of stairs and has a small number of couches and tables.

Metro Access/Parking: Woodley Park / National Zoo and then walk .7 miles across the Calvert Street bridge into Adams Morgan. It’s Adams Morgan, so parking at night and on weekends can be really tricky. We suggest Uber or Lyft if that’s an option.

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OUR EXPERIENCE

Logistics:

Description of the room: A small office… nothing too memorable.

Understanding of the Mission: Find out what happened to Professor Stanley before you disappear without a trace.

Did We Escape: yes

Time Remaining: don’t remember… 11 minutes?

Our Suggested Party Size: we had 6 and that was plenty.

Did the room challenge the entire team? No

Members of our team (other than the ERG): Melissa, Jess, and Jen.

Worth the time and money? Unfortunately, we had to give this one a “no,” and we had a Groupon to discount the price.

Where to Eat/Drink Before/After: It’s Adams Morgan, so there are plenty of places to eat and drink. Here’s where we went:

• Roofer’s Union – we stopped in for a few drinks.

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Our Scoring:

JASON SAYS:	MIKE SAYS:
Overall Expectation (Summary)
Time Travel. That’s what I expected. I didn’t get it. I mean, the room touts TIME. FREAKING. TRAVEL. Nope. BOGUS. Yes, they were late to start. Considering we got there 20 minutes early, had time to go to CVS to get some cold medicine, everyone on the team was able to go to the bathroom, I was already annoyed by the time we got in there.	I don’t know what I expected here. This was the first room we did at this location. I was a bit peeved that they were running about 15 minutes late since every other room we had done to that point made it very clear that they start on time.
Story (Rating)
So, this genius disappears, right. Apparently, we were such good friends that he neglected to tell me that he was working on this breaking science. #SCIENCE Rating: 6/10	The story was interesting at least, and was unique in terms of it involving time travel. Rating: 7/10
Mission (Rating)
Blatantly simple, just find out how the Professor disappeared. Rating: 5/10	Pay attention to anything involving time and find out what happened to the dear Professor. No multiple objectives, which lowered this score for me. Rating: 4/10
Puzzle Diversity (Rating)
There were a few puzzles that we hadn’t seen before but were twists on others, and the “middle” one was pretty cool. Rating: 7/10	The puzzles had some variety to them (they weren’t all the same) and we saw two that we hadn’t seen before. However, nothing was too memorable about them. Rating: 6/10
Puzzle Complexity (Rating)
There were a few decent puzzles that, once you looked at them the right way, fell right into place. But there was this one puzzle that can go scratch. We freakin’ stared at it, collectively, for a LONG time and had to get help on it. Rating: 8/10	I only remember one puzzle that gave us a problem (I think we spent 15 minutes on it), and there literally was no way of solving it without a lot of help if you didn’t already know the solution. That’s all I can say without giving it away. Rating: 6/10
Flow/Cohesiveness/Uniqueness (Rating)
While yes, the puzzles were ‘time related’, they didn’t relate to time TRAVEL. At all. Which, again, was disappointing. The decor was basically non-existent. I think we ended in an HVAC closet. One of the puzzles was unique-enough to get a shout-out here, but don’t color me impressed at all. Rating: 5/10	Many of the puzzles did relate to time (the theme of the room), but there were a few that seemed to come in out of left field and seemed to have no connection or continuity. The decor was sparse, but the props they did have related well to the theme. We did have two puzzles that we had difficulties solving even with the correct solution (prop error?), so that soured the experience a bit. Rating: 5/10
Fun/Amusement (Summary)
The only good time I had was solving the first two puzzles. I was pretty bored for the first half and I was super pissed by the time we got out.	I was annoyed and glad to get out of the room to end the experience. I don’t know what it was about this room, but I chalk it up to a notch in the belt that we solved another room.
Game Master (Summary)
Sigh. I was totally unimpressed with her. The communications were via walkie-talkie and it felt like she wasn’t paying attention. I had to ask for a replacement flashlight at least three times before she came in to talk to me. Then it took her a minute or two to give us a new one.	I was unimpressed. I don’t know if she was new, but there was no enthusiasm to get us excited about the room. When we radioed to her to ask for another walkie-talkie (the batteries seemed to be low, from what I recall), there was no urgency to get it to us, which wasted some time. I also recall Jason talking to the manager afterwards when we were leaving and he was out on the sidewalk.
How Helpful Were Any Clues Given, if any (Summary)
Uh, yeah, Mike nailed this one.	The clues were not helpful on the one puzzle we needed it on. She kept repeating the same thing over and over as we were stuck for almost 15 minutes on the same clue.
Anger Level Score	ERG (pronounced URG, as in “we should have known better”) Score
Thankfully, one of us has a separate review based on ANGER. GRRRRRR After we got outside the building, the guy that signed us in, who we think was the manager, was there. I went over to talk to him about some of the clues that we were given and how irrelevant they were. He mostly agreed and apologized, hopefully taking my advice for future games. Rating: 4/5 Fists	Nothing that I felt stupid about, so no rating necessary. Rating:     FacePalms – 0/5

ESCAPE ROOM GUYS’ OVERALL SCORING: 5.9/10

Final thoughts: We don’t know if the start of this experience began with a delay and no apologies, the inexperienced Game Master, or with the room itself. At some point, we think we commented to each other that the room seemed to be thrown together (like someone had started an Escape Room in their garage). However, with a few tweaks, we feel this room can be polished up and made into a better experience overall.