ESCAPE ROOM REVIEW – THE QUICK AND DIRTY

Play if… you’ve always wanted to be a secret agent.

Avoid if… you can’t tell your right from your left.

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THE BASICS

Cville Escape Room: (MOVED TO NEW LOCATION June 1, 2018)

Address: 218 W Main St, 2nd Floor, Charlottesville, VA (click address for Google Map)
New location is: 310 E. Main St., Charlottesville, VA

Contact and Website: 434-566-9499
https://www.cvilleescaperoom.com

The Room – Spy’s Demise: RETIRED

Description (from the company website): Deadly toxins, double agents, and other nefarious elements conspire to eliminate the secret agent players.

Difficulty (1-10): unlisted

Time Limit: 60 minutes

Cost: $25 + tax per person

Identifier: R1

Party Size: Up to 8

Staging Area: They put us in a conference room and came in to give us the briefing.

Metro Access/Parking: There’s a pay-parking lot about 1.5 blocks away and street parking, if you can find it.

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OUR EXPERIENCE

Logistics:

Description of the room: Saying the room was cluttered would not be doing it justice. It was full of props and propaganda (propsaganda?), but almost everything was used.

Understanding of the Mission: figure out what happened to our comrade, who the double agent was and complete his mission.

Did We Escape: We did!

Time Remaining: Thinking it was under 10 minutes

Our Suggested Party Size: We had 10 because it was a special event, but we would definitely recommend no more than 8.

Did the room challenge the entire team? Yes

Members of our team (other than the ERG): Rohan, Steph, Chris, Cecilia, Trish, Brittany, Corey

Worth the time and money? Absolutely

Where to Eat/Drink Before/After: It’s downtown Charlottesville right off the main pedestrian walkway, so there are tons of options. We ate dinner at the place below.

• Fellini’s – good cocktails and beer selection. Food was okay.

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Our Scoring:

JASON SAYS:	MIKE SAYS:
Overall Expectation (Summary)
The description from Cville’s website is decidedly short, so I wasn’t sure what I was getting myself into. However, upon exiting, I realized it was well worth the cost of admission.	We were in Charlottesville celebrating Jason’s birthday (what better way to celebrate an ERG birthday, AM I RIGHT?!). Honestly, we really wanted to do the Mad Scientist’s Lab, but we had too many people, so we booked the room that would accommodate the largest party. However, anything spy-related has me ready to tackle the challenge (all the better if a Bond girl is on one arm with a vodka martini shaken, not stirred in the other hand).
Story (Rating)
The background to this room, if I recall, was that we were to recover some documents from the office while staying alive for an hour. May have to do some research on this one to accurately rate. Rating: 8/10	You are being dropped off at the last known location where a fellow spy disappeared without completing his mission. Rating: 8/10
Mission (Rating)
Like I said, we had to recover documents. That was the start. The rest of the mission we found out during the room, so I can’t (and won’t) spoil it for you. Rating: 8/10	Find out what happened to your comrade, complete his mission by finding the documents, and who the double agent was that betrayed him. Rating: 7/10
Puzzle Diversity (Rating)
This room was definitely one of my favorites (Top 5!) and not only because it was for my birthday. We had puzzles that we hadn’t seen before, props too, and the puzzles actually led into the remaining mission points (that I can’t get talk about). Rating: 9/10	Oh, wow… this room was probably one of the best rooms in terms of the different types of puzzles for us to agonize (yes, some of them we agonized) over. Bonus points to Cville Escape Room for working with me to hide puzzle pieces in the room that formed a personal birthday message for Jason. See the message below the rating (and always, always let the companies know if it’s a special event). Rating: 9/10
Puzzle Complexity (Rating)
The puzzles we encountered in this room ranged from easy to extremely difficult. This was one of the few rooms that we’ve been in that multiple puzzles stumped us, all the while keeping the entire team engaged and, well, happy.  Rating: 10/10	Okay, so I’ll admit. I did spend the first 10 minutes making sure some of our newbies were engaged in the experience, so I didn’t get a chance to work on all the puzzles in the room. The ones that I did participate on solving were complex… requiring more thought than I expected. But, you gotta love a challenge! The one puzzle was based on a classic game, and that was the first time I’ve seen this happen. It was pretty awesome. Rating: 10/10
Flow/Cohesiveness/Uniqueness (Rating)
Everything in this room worked so well together, even the puzzles of which I had no clue what I was doing. Once we figured them out, the entire story was clear and made that much more awesome. On top of that, someone (*cough*Mike*cough*) told them it was my birthday and they hid a little picture (broken up into pieces) around the room. Picture below! Rating: 10/10	The room looked like a regular office, but also had a lot of props that you needed to use in different ways to solve the puzzles. While a few of the puzzles seemed to not fit the theme, we encountered the next “phase” of the mission and everything began to fall into place. Rating: 9/10
Fun/Amusement (Summary)
Uh, yeah. I think that’s an understatement.	Absolutely. It was a great theme, had challenging puzzles and was a great way to celebrate a birthday.
Game Master (Summary)
Can’t say I remember much other than the look of excitement on his face when he came into the room after we figured out how to escape. Not sure if he was surprised we did, but it great to see nonetheless.	He seemed pretty surprised that we solved the room that quickly with as little help as we actually asked for.
How Helpful Were Any Clues Given, if any (Summary)
We asked for 2 clues (I think) and yes, they were helpful. Not so much as just telling us what do to do figure out the puzzle, but steered us towards the solution without making us feel stupid.	Yes, the clues we were provided definitely helped steer us towards the solution without revealing too much.
Anger Level Score	ERG (pronounced URG, as in “we should have known better”) Score
I have nothing bad to say about this room. I’m looking forward to going back for the other 3! Rating: 0/5 Fists	Loved the room and I don’t recall feeling stupid at any point because the puzzles were challenging. We’re planning to go back one weekend and do all the rest of the rooms in one fell swoop! Rating:      FacePalms – 0/5

ESCAPE ROOM GUYS’ OVERALL SCORING: 8.8/10

Final Thought: While not first on our list of the rooms to tackle, this one was definitely memorable and had some of the best puzzles we’ve seen in all of the rooms we had done to that point. We look forward to returning and getting through the other rooms!

Jason’s birthday message: