ESCAPE ROOM REVIEW – THE QUICK AND DIRTY
Play if… you enjoy Egyptian themes, pharaohs fascinate you, or you “enjoy” being entombed.
Avoid if… none of the above speaks to you or you are afraid of the ancient dead.
THE BASICS
The 47 Seals
Address: 1513 E Mulberry St, Fort Collins, CO 80524 (click address for Google Map)
Contact and Website: 970-472-8000
https://www.the47seals.com
The Room – Pharaoh’s Revenge:
Description (from the company website): You’re part of a large archeological dig team that’s looking for lost artifacts near the Valley of the Kings. After a routine supply run, you return and realize something went terribly wrong. The other members who stayed behind at the dig site are lying outside of the field office, barely conscious and near death. Now it’s up to you to figure out what caused this sickness and help the team before it’s too late.
Your time inside the room is limited. Do you have what it takes to solve the clues and puzzles to save your team?
Difficulty (1-10): Easy to Moderate
Time Limit: 60 minutes
Cost: $20
Identifier: R1
Party Size: 2-10
Staging Area: The 47 Seals’ rooms are within Fort Fun. From the entrance to Fort Fun, go straight past the counter to the staircase in the back and up said stairs to find the rooms. There’s a small waiting area with lockers and couches (but take your stuff in the room since one key opens ALL the lockers, meaning you don’t get to keep the key with you, the GM does).
Metro Access/Parking: There is a large parking lot for the Fort Fun facility.
OUR EXPERIENCE
This is the video we took before we entered the room:
I am not entirely sure why this one recorded the way it did. Sorry. ~Jason
This is the video we took just after we completed the room:
Logistics:
Description of the room: You start in a room with a center pillar and symbols on all the walls. Plenty of space for a larger group if you have one. It’s a very clean-looking room; feels like there should have been some sand on the floor.
Understanding of the Mission: Solve all the puzzles to figure out what caused your colleagues to fall ill and cure them before it’s too late.
Did We Escape: Yes
Time Remaining: 15…ish
Our Suggested Party Size: This is one of the few rooms rated up to 10 people that could actually FIT 10 people comfortably. However, I still wouldn’t recommend more than 6, 8 people tops. There wouldn’t be enough to do (though there IS the space).
Did the room challenge the entire team? Yes
Members of our team (other than the ERG): Steph D (And we forgot to take a photo after…)
Worth the time and money? Yes.
Where to Eat/Drink Before/After:
- Fort Fun is only about 8 minutes away from the main drag with all the restaurants and such, but we recommend Chick’nCone.
| JASON says: |
|---|
| Overall Expectation (Summary) |
| We decided to go up to Ft Collins for the afternoon/evening since we had time off and found an escape room that was only a few minutes from the main drag out there. After getting a quick whiskey tasting done, we headed over to Fort Fun to find The 47 Seals and enter the tomb of an unknown Pharaoh. I can’t recall another time I’ve been in a room that was in an amusement center, but it’s a perfect place for it.
The fact that this was in an amusement center made me think it wasn’t going to be entirely good, but I think we were pleasantly surprised. Let’s see how the rating plays out. |
| Story (Rating) |
| The story told onsite matches the website, so you won’t experience any surprises. That said, you’re part of an archaeological dig near the Valley of Kings and upon your return from a supply run, you find that the rest of the team has fallen incredibly ill and is on the verge of death. You estimate they have about an hour before they die and it’s now up to you to find out how to reverse whatever curse has befallen them and save them all.
There’s really no other story here, which is somewhat unfortunate because the theme is ripe for imaginative storytelling. Oh well. Rating: 6.5/10 |
| Mission (Rating) |
| Using everything at your disposal, unlock the secret of the tomb and find the other half of a relic that’s secured in a box in the chamber. Once you do, you are free to leave (presumably with your recovered colleagues).
Rating: 7/10 |
| Puzzle Diversity (Rating) |
| There was a minimal amount of physical locks. Most puzzles were RFID or magnetic, which is great. The puzzles that were there fit the theme well (and the fact that they were RFID or such lent itself to how the puzzles opened to reveal the next item or what not). Nothing was out of place either.
The puzzles ranged from an actual puzzle to hieroglyph translation and one physical puzzle (you needed to step on things and see what happens, but it’s pretty obvious what’s going on; more about this later because this is where we got stuck at one point). Nothing was repeated, either, so little bit of a bonus there IMO. Rating: 10/10 |
| Puzzle Complexity (Rating) |
| This room was rated ‘easy to moderate’ with a 55% success rate. It’s not terribly difficult but took us a while because there were only 2 of us and there’s multiple paths to work on, so there was some back and forth going on. We did get stuck at one point, but Steph was on the right track and when we got a nudge of basically “you’re so close!”, we saw what was happening and were able to solve it in about a minute after that (it just took time to solve; it was sort of involved).
Difficulty spread would be roughly 2-6/7. Additionally, the one puzzle mentioned above that we got stuck on was not because we were stumped but was because the way to solve it wasn’t working. You had to do 2 things and the GM ended up coming to help us and still couldn’t get it working, so he gave us a ‘puzzle’ that we had to solve (which is basically what we would have found if it were working correctly) and then we just had to solve that to get the last item and complete the room. (And, sorry all, taking off half a point due to the puzzle not working.) Rating: 7.5/10 |
| Flow/Cohesiveness/Uniqueness (Rating) |
| The room flowed very well. As I said earlier, everything fit and nothing really pulled us out of Egypt until the aforementioned puzzle stopped working. Other than that, it was a well crafted room. It started off a little slow (as I feel most rooms we’ve done lately do) and the first thing is actually a manual dexterity puzzle that I sort of cheated on (if you’re tall enough, you don’t really need to do it the right way…). It looked like a tomb and the second to last puzzle had a nice little touch to it. There were one or two things in there that were just obvious (to me at least) and I knew exactly what to do the moment I got to touch them.
Rating: 8.5/10 |
| Fun/Amusement (Summary) |
| All in all, we had a good time in the tomb. I can’t really say anything more or less. |
| Game Master (Summary) |
| He was very helpful. I was just bummed he had to come into the room to help with the one puzzle. Not his fault; we were doing it right, but it was just not working. Our ‘official’ time was 13:15 remaining, but because of the issue with that puzzle, we agreed on a time of 15:15 remaining. |
| How Helpful Were Any Clues Given, if any (Summary) |
| We did get a clue to get us started and a nudge here and there, but we were mostly left to our own devices. |
| RAGE Meter OR ERG (pronounced URG, as in “we should have known better”) Score |
| There was a time at the start that I just wanted to rage quit, but I stuck it out and we were able to progress. There were more times that I just felt stupid. So this is a 2 fist-er (“annoyed”). Rating: 👊👊 |
ESCAPE ROOM GUYS’ OVERALL SCORING 7.9/10
Final Thought: I’ve always been a bit weary of escape rooms that are part of some sort of amusement complex, which is why this is likely the first one that’s been escaped, but it was pretty well done. Our GM said this was the more fun of the 2 rooms, so I’m not sure if we’ll head back to do the other. However, Fort Collins is a nice area so don’t be surprised if you see a review of their other room, Mayday, at some point.