The night that we had planned to really celebrate with Malia and the night started with dinner at Sauce Boss Southern Kitchen. We brought things to make it clear it was Malia’s birthday:

I think she liked our Best Boss, Birthday card.

The cute Hite kids together.

Sisters, with their drinks.

Karl getting us set up to play dominoes.

We had waited for quite a a while to get a table.

But it was worth it! They give you a starter of Pork Rinds.

Malia, like a birthday genus, ordered the “Red Drink.” Perfectly tart, sour, sweet, delicious.

Then dinner came. Yes, it was very good. I inhaled my corn bread.

After dinner we met up with Krysta and Zac, and added Betsy and her boyfriend Chris to our escape room set. We went to a new place, Alcatraz Escape Games. We did a room called, Chole, and it was TERRIBLE.

Here was Karl’s Google Review:

“I’m really disappointed. We went to Chloe. We were dumped in the room by a rushed worker with no explanation of narrative or goals. The thematic elements in the room were effective, but the puzzles and mechanisms were an enormous letdown.

Worse than a waste of an hour and $300. The room was essentially broken. There was no narrative. The mechanisms were not intuitive. There was 1 flashlight for 7 people. Many red herring clues. We ended up blocked for over 10 minutes 3 times. Once waiting for a broken proximity sensor, once trying to parse clues from a sea of data, finally at the end trying to figure out what we now suspect was a 4 letter word for a 5 letter lock. We didn’t see our actor for the last 30 minutes or so.

As it stands now, I definitely don’t recommend this experience for anybody who likes escape rooms and has done them elsewhere. The other rooms must be better, based on the rating, but I don’t feel like I can trust the employees enough to risk another large spend.

If anybody at Alcatraz Games wants more precise feedback, I’ve got some specific suggestions that would make this fun for future players.”

Their Response: 

   

Malia’s Review:

It was a bummer of a birthday.  We did Chloe for my birthday party.  We spent weeks researching which room would be fun and challenging and were excited for the occasion, even though it cost far more than we were used to paying for an escape room.

Our team is a competitive and experienced team that holds a few records and has always escaped within the hour allotted…until now.  Please know that the one-star review is not because we were unsuccessful, it is because I am really frustrated.  I have done several other rooms that were more challenging, but we were unable to escape in the hour because of faults in the design and mechanisms of the room.

The spookiness of the room was great and Chloe, herself, effectively terrifying.  But we were not given any guidance of what our goal was and why we were trying to “escape.”  The puzzles were linear, meaning each clue to solve was in a specific order.  This caused there to be many people task-less.  In fact, one member of our team literally stood out of the way for the entire hour because there was nothing for him to do while one or two people worked on the puzzle at hand.  There were few puzzles with many “non-puzzles” which wasted time and were specifically there as red herrings.

The more frustrating aspect of this room was not the faults in design or story, it was the mechanisms and puzzles.  Specifically, the singular blue glow stick as the only light source, the sensor that did not effectively trigger, the nearly impossible to solve puzzles due to poor execution of the puzzle design, and the illogical “solutions” to several puzzles.  We lost LOTS of time due to these faults.

I do not recommend the Chloe room for anyone who is looking for an escape room experience.  If you want an immersive haunted house that is more than walking through the maze of scares, then this might be the room for you.  I assume the other rooms are better because the ratings are so high.  But I do not think we will do another Alcatraz Games escape room due to our frustrating experience.

Their Response:

Still waiting, I will post it when it arrives

We were pretty bummed:

Krytsta and Zac, thought Malia was coming over, so when we met them back at our house they had this for her:

Don’t worry, Lucas found it and ate the frosting before we could get it to her.