ESCAPE ROOM REVIEW – THE QUICK AND DIRTY

Play if… you love horror movies.

Avoid if… a little gore turns your stomach

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THE BASICS

Laurel’s House of Horror & Escape Room:

Address: 935 Fairlawn Ave, Laurel, MD 20707 (click address for Google Map)

Contact and Website: 240-278-4545
http://www.laurelhaunt.com

The Room – RETIRED

Description (from the company website): You and a group will experience four distinctive rooms, with iconic scenes from your favorite record-breaking horror films including Saw, Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Insidious. Solve intricate puzzles and race the clock to escape Jigsaw, Michael Myers or Freddy Krueger.  Your limits will be tested in an attempt to truly Escape the Movies… or become our next victims trapped inside the haunted theater!

Note: this room has been revamped since we did it, so your experience may not be the same.

Difficulty (1-10): none listed

Time Limit: 60 minutes

Cost: $25 + tax per person

Identifier: R1

Party Size: Up to 8

Staging Area: It’s in an old movie theater that is supposedly haunted, so pretty damn creepy.

Metro Access/Parking: not metro accessible at all. The theater is in a strip mall so there is plenty of parking.

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OUR EXPERIENCE

Logistics:

Description of the room: The theater itself was pretty cool looking. They turn it into a haunted house for the Halloween season.

The rooms themselves were very well done… we knew what movie we were supposed to be in and they added some additional decorations to help with the theme.

Understanding of the Mission: Solve the clues going through 4 rooms based on different horror movies, find the key and escape before the monsters get you!

Did We Escape: Yes, by the skin of our teeth (bad pun intended)

Time Remaining: About 45 seconds

Our Suggested Party Size: They say up to 8 can do the room, but we had only 4 (which was supposed to be 6), and that was sufficient.

Did the room challenge the entire team? Yes, there was plenty for all of us to do.

Members of our team (other than the ERG): Steph

Worth the time and money? Yes!

Where to Eat/Drink Before/After: We’re not familiar with Laurel, so we’re going to have to leave you to Google for a recommendation.

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Our Scoring:

JASON SAYS:	MIKE SAYS:
Overall Expectation (Summary)
I. LOVE. HORROR MOVIES. But I’m more a Jason Vorhees guy than a Freddy Krueger guy, but I’ll let that slide. I was expecting some crazy stuff to be in here and I was not disappointed. And I’m pretty sure we actually experienced one of the reported hauntings of the theater…	One of our friends who has done a number of rooms with us found this place. We were hesitant to make the drive to Laurel, but the scary movie theme intrigued us. I’m glad we went.
Story (Rating)
You’re trapped. There’s a key to get out. But lord help you if you touch anything on the walls in Mike Myers’ room… Rating: 6/10	You are trapped in a haunted theater where you need to solve the puzzles in 4 rooms based on different horror movies. Find the key to move to the next room and the final key to escape all together. Rating: 8/10
Mission (Rating)
Solve puzzles, find keys, GTFO. Kept it simple. Rating: 5/10	Mission is essentially to find keys, open the rooms and escape. Rating: 6/10
Puzzle Diversity (Rating)
I don’t remember specifics of the puzzles, aside from a few that really stuck out, but I can say that they were disjointed inter-room but thematic intra-room. Rating: 6/10	The puzzles themselves were diverse, but essentially you had to find the series of keys to get from room to room. Rating: 7/10
Puzzle Complexity (Rating)
I think we could have used more hands than eyes at one point, but nothing was terribly crazy. Except that guy… Rating: 6/10	The puzzles themselves weren’t too complex, and we seemed to solve them pretty quickly. I think we may have needed more eyes at points (more team members), but we got out in the end. Rating: 7/10
Flow/Cohesiveness/Uniqueness (Rating)
Let me start by saying that I can’t remember if I’ve seen Insidious. Which means I should probably watch it regardless. The rooms were decorated (if you can really call that decorating, and I mean that in a good way) perfectly for the movies they represented (and creepy AF). The puzzles were not much to write home about, considered to other rooms we’ve escaped, but I guess that’s the Escape Room equivalent of having a chase scene and face-planting mid stride. And yes, I give Mike a 10/10 for effort… Rating: 9/10	You essentially had to flow from room to room, and each room was themed for a different horror movie, so the “sets” were pretty well done. I was really impressed with the Saw room. So much that I went for broke in trying to figure out the last clue. This was also one of the only rooms to date that had a live actor moving around the rooms, lending to the urgency that when time ran out, you couldn’t escape him! Rating: 10/10
Fun/Amusement (Summary)
As I said earlier, I love horror movies, so I was pleasantly surprised by this whole setup. I plan on going again to do the revamped room.	Being a huge fan of horror movies, I really enjoyed this experience.
Game Master (Summary)
She filled us in on the background of the building as well as the rooms. Hints were given via walkie-talkie when requested. The live-actor helped out too.	She was pretty great about telling us the backstory and giving us a hint here or there.
How Helpful Were Any Clues Given, if any (Summary)
Pretty sure we only asked her for one actual hint and maybe one or two “are we doing this right?”‘s.	I think we needed one hint and it was something that we overlooked, so the clue was helpful.
Anger Level Score	ERG (pronounced URG, as in “we should have known better”) Score
SO MANY KEYS!  But there was one spot in one of the rooms that we didn’t realize was supposed to…um…open. Rating: 1/5 Fists	I’ll give this a 5 because of what I ended up doing to escape the room and find that last damn key. The actors told us that I was the only person who went to such extremes to solve the room. Thank god red dye comes out with a really good scrubbing! Rating: ?‍♂️?‍♂️?‍♂️?‍♂️?‍♂️ FacePalms – 5/5

ESCAPE ROOM GUYS’ OVERALL SCORING: 7/10

Final Thoughts: Overall, a good experience for 4 people. We look forward to returning to try out the revamped room, and their new ones.