ESCAPE ROOM REVIEW – THE QUICK AND DIRTY

Play if… you like the Mummy movies or anything Egypt.

Avoid if… you don’t want to get dirty or have asthma.

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THE BASICS

Escape Room Live Georgetown:

Address: 3345 M St NW, Washington, DC 20007 (click address for Google Map)

Contact and Website: 800-616-4880
http://www.escaperoomlive.com/our-rooms
[email protected]

The Room – Curse of the Mummy:

Description (from the company website): You are archaeologists, lost in a forbidden Egyptian tomb with the stone doors sealed behind you. Air is running out & the curse of Anubis will take you! Escape is the only option. Find the secret passage to escape with your life!

Difficulty (1-10): 6/10

Time Limit: 45

Cost: $28 + tax per person but use ERGUYS15 when booking to save 15% off per ticket.

Identifier: R1

Party Size: 8-10

Staging Area: This is probably the swankiest location we’ve seen. Tons of seating AND A BAR (wine and beer). There are also free lockers to stash your belongings before you enter the room.

Metro Access/Parking: Rosslyn metro and then a .9 mile walk across the Key Bridge. It’s Georgetown, so parking can be difficult (so definitely carpool and use the parking garage for Georgetown Mall (at Wisconsin and M, head down the hill towards K Street). We suggest Uber or Lyft.

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OUR EXPERIENCE

This is the video we took before we entered the room:

This is the video we took just after we completed the room:

Logistics:

Description of the room: You enter the first room of an Egyptian tomb. There are a number of statues along the walls, a big-ass pharaoh’s head, and some weird altar in the center, and some archaeology tools scattered among everything else.

Understanding of the Mission: Find out what happened to the (now) missing archaeologist and escape before getting cursed.

Did We Escape: Yes, and we SHOULD have made the freakin’ leader board… [Jason is still pissed about this. Mike is pissed too, but only slightly less than Jason’s all burning pissed-off-ed-ness (I hear there are creams for that)]

Time Remaining: 5:30

Our Suggested Party Size: We had 5. Six should probably be your max for this room.

Did the room challenge the entire team? Mostly

Members of our team (other than the ERG): Birgit, Whitney, and Angie

Worth the time and money? Yes

Where to Eat/Drink Before/After: It’s Georgetown, so there are plenty of places to go for food and drinks, depending on your budget. We’ll leave it to Google, since we had beer at their bar.

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Our Scoring:

JASON SAYS:	MIKE SAYS:
Overall Expectation (Summary)
I’ve been looking forward to getting back here since doing the Friday the 13th room. I just don’t like going to Georgetown. That said, I remember seeing the outside of the room and it looked awesome, so I expected the inside to be just as awesome.	So, one of the things that is really excellent about Escape Room Live’s Georgetown location is that their rooms are EXTREMELY well done in terms of decoration. They truly transport you directly into the experience. Having done the Friday the 13th room, we selected this one to do with our friends from Escape Room Woodbridge
Story (Rating)
As archaeologists, you’re called in to find out what’s happened to the archaeologist that discovered the tomb. Problem is, it’s now sealed you in. Well, shit. Oh, there’s a curse that’s going to be placed on me as my air runs out in an hour? Double shit! Rating: 9/10	You are a team of archaeologists who are summoned to the location of a newly-discovered tomb to determine what happened to the head archaeologist, who disappeared amidst rumors of a mummy’s curse.  Rating: 8/10
Mission (Rating)
Woo, multiple objectives! Not only did we have to escape the room (again, before our air runs out and/or we are cursed), but we had to determine what happened to the missing archaeologist. It’s basically built into the escape and really well integrated into the whole thing. Good job, people! Rating: 8/10	Search the tomb and find out what happened to the missing archaeologist and how to escape within 45 minutes. I like that we had to do more than just escape the room, but find out what happened to the missing archaeologist becomes really apparent as you progress through the room, so it’s more interwoven into the theme vs. an actual mission goal. Rating: 8/10
Puzzle Diversity (Rating)
I will always give a +1 for seeing things I haven’t seen before, so let me just get that out of the way. This room definitely had some new things for us (actually, the majority of puzzles in there were new…). Nothing was repeated (except for the one that we activated twice to hear it again for its clue). But there was a ton of cool stuff in this room and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Rating: 10/10	There was a great mix of the types of puzzles here, and I don’t believe we saw one combination lock. That being said, some of the puzzles required the same method of solving them as others, but when you’re dealing with an ancient tomb, that’s understandable. Lots of tech in this room, and one puzzle may require a little out-of-the-box thinking in order to solve it. We saw some red herrings in here too, which always ups the challenge. Rating: 8/10
Puzzle Complexity (Rating)
We blew through the first half of this room. Even though one of our team was a NEWB, she actually pulled her weight once we got going. This room was great because there was plenty of stuff to do that required actual teamwork to complete. That is not necessarily something we can say about the majority of rooms/puzzles. (And to be clear, I’m not talking about just needing a second set of eyes; I’m talking a second pair of HANDS.) Rating: 8.5/10	I don’t think that any of the puzzles were overly complex. We did have an Escape Room Virgin with us who was a tiny bit worried about doing the room with us (we’re actually nice guys, so I don’t know why she was so worried – the “nice” is left unsaid because The Nice Escape Room Guys doesn’t have quite the same ring or acronym – NERG (too close to NERD for my taste, which would have brought back haunting memories of middle school)… but I digress). Our ERV jumped right into the experience and figured out some stuff right away and worked the room like a pro by the time we finished up. Some of the puzzles required group think or action, and made you use both left and right sides of the brain, which is always pretty cool. Rating: 7/10
Flow/Cohesiveness/Uniqueness (Rating)
This room was particularly well put together. Everything from the clues to the story about the missing archaeologist fit well in the overall room and kept it moving along. And no, no fucking spiderwebs, Mike. Remember Room Omega’s final room? That damn spiderweb above the exit into that room? Yeah, F. That.  Rating: 10/10	Yeah, ERL Georgetown always gets top ratings for their rooms at this location because THEY. ARE. JUST. SO. FREAKIN. WELL. DONE! I truly felt as if we were either on a movie set for The Mummy, or in an actual tomb. They only thing missing would be spiderwebs everywhere since the tomb is supposed to be ancient, but that’s nitpicking. All the puzzles and clues definitely related to the theme of the room, and even had you going back and forth once you thought something was done. One point is on a specific puzzle. We solved it using a method that wasn’t the proper way to do it, so it had us confused later on when we found something that took us to that puzzle next. It broke up the room-solving process a bit, but we recovered and queried our Game Master whether we were good to go. Rating: 10/10
Fun/Amusement (Summary)
I think it’s pretty obvious that I liked this room. I’m still pissed that we were screwed by Rule #3 again, but I should be frickin’ used to that at this point. Grrrrrrrrr As Mike says, the leaderboard here is different from other locations. I won’t explain it again since it’s right there. I had a good time regardless. But the string of obscenities that flowed from my mouth was second to none…	Well, I was definitely into the whole experience and getting a bit anxious at the end since we didn’t want to ask for a clue because that meant we couldn’t make the leaderboard (ERL Georgetown’s leaderboard system is actually pretty cool… it’s the top time based on the number of people in the room. There was no slot for 5 when we we entered, so we hoped to get through the room without asking for a clue to claim that spot. Um, NOPE. We f&%#ing broke Rule #3 again, and ended up asking for a clue with 7 minutes remaining so we would avoid another failure. So, I ended up being a bit pissed, but thankful that we solved the room. Jason was pretty well, just pissed.
Game Master (Summary)
The one thing that annoyed me about this room was the way we communicated with the GM in this room. It was an old candlestick phone. While it fit as a prop, and it worked, it was cumbersome to use and you could barely hear it ring (did it even ring?) when she tried to get our attention. She herself was pretty good, though. Again, as Mike said, she tried to cheer us up after we failed to get on the leaderboard, but the only thing that did that was alcohol after the fact.	Our GM was pretty good. She did a great job in delivering the backstory and mission, and in clarifying that we had already solved a puzzle using a different method (I think it was just a dumb mistake). She did try and cheer us up at the end by saying “hey, you solved the room” when we didn’t make the leaderboard, which was nice (but no less soothing to our massive egos).
How Helpful Were Any Clues Given, if any (Summary)
What he said. Needs no further explanation.	The clue was disappointingly helpful. Essentially, “look again” in a location we solved for something that we overlooked. If it would have been a snake, it would have bit us… HARD… right in the junk.
Anger Level Score	ERG (pronounced URG, as in “we should have known better”) Score
@*&)( $#*$(*&# ^@!* &(#*% ) #_%*) *^!(*&^#& %@&(*^$#% &(&@) (#&%^# Rating: ????? Fists – 5/5	Yup, this is was a definite stupid moment for us. We need to adjust how we go over Rule #3 and make sure someone (or multiple someones) is double-checking everyone else. Rating:  ?‍♂️ ?‍♂️ ?‍♂️ ?‍♂️ ?‍♂️ FacePalms – 5/5

ESCAPE ROOM GUYS’ OVERALL SCORING: 8.65/10

Final Thought: This was a great room to do, and we would recommend this for groups that have a mix of newbies and veterans. Loved the different types of locks and puzzles, and the overall ambiance was just about perfect. We would not, however, recommend it for a group that is ALL newbies, as there are 1 or 2 puzzles that we bet they’d never figure out.