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| - I went with a party of 7 and we did Chop Shop (the suspense themed room). The staff was very nice and they had us fill out the waivers before we got started. I was surprised that they stressed arriving early for our reservation, yet we ended up starting at least 20 minutes after our scheduled time.
I was pretty excited to try this room but it ended up being incredibly disappointing. This may be because my friends and I expected an experience where we look for clues, solve puzzles, and eventually escape. Chop Shop was more along the lines of search the area you can access (everyone is chained up at the start), look for keys, and pass the keys to your friends in the hopes that it unlocks something. If you can't find keys, you're out of luck. Also, you're doing this in a very dimly lit room. I don't want to give much away, but for the most part it's very hard to see what's around you. For some reason, the music playing in the room was very loud and unfitting for the theme of the room. (We're trying to escape a room, not fight an epic battle)
The area where you're chained is random, but I felt unbearably bad for my friends who were chained the whole game. (only 4 out of 7 of us were free by the end of the hour) We paid $35 for a fun experience together, but they spent an entire hour chained up because we couldn't find keys. We didn't encounter a single puzzle. It felt like an hour of scrambling around in the dark, hoping to find tiny keys. For my friends who we're chained the whole time, it was entire hour of watching the freed players look for keys. I can't stress how bad that feels to just watch and be physically prevented from playing the game. (again, $35)
I'm giving this a 2/5 because from what I can tell, other customers really enjoyed the other two rooms, Sherlock and Atelophobia. So it's possible our room was just really different from those two. Also, I thought the staff was pretty good. They do help you out with a few hints along the way, which is nice. I would suggest that they give more hints earlier. Our first hint was at the 30 minute point and we had been stuck on finding that lock for 15 minutes. I understand that this room is supposed to be very difficult, but it wasn't very fun. Maybe don't chain up every player so groups have a better chance of making it out of the first part.
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