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| - TL;DR - Deadwood is good, Cairo is not. Staff is nice, but location has serious ventilation problems.
First visit:
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My friends and I did the "Deadwood" room, and enjoyed it thoroughly. The gameplay was semi-linear, and our group of 6 cleared the room with about 15 minutes to spare. Although the strip mall location made me a little skeptical at first, once inside, we had a blast. The staff was very friendly and accommodating.
Second visit:
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[Rating revised down from 5 stars to 3]
This time we tried the Cairo room; it was not a good experience.
The puzzle rooms at Escape Scene have apparently been constructed without any regard for ventilation. The Cairo room was extremely stuffy and around 85 degrees, despite the fact that it was 9:30 PM. This is in stark contrast to the Deadwood room, which is immediately adjacent and was significantly cooler.
Our group had 8 people, which was entirely too many for the room. Trying to navigate the room reminded me of riding the airport shuttle bus in Istanbul, where employees literally shove people together to cram more passengers in. Six people should be the absolute maximum for this room, however four would be more suitable.
I expect escape rooms to be challenging, and understand that some are non-linear by design, but this room was ill conceived and poorly executed. The primary puzzle is about as intuitive as watching bootleg, Chinese dubbed copy of "Inception" for the first time, assuming you miss the first 30 minutes of the movie and are tripping on acid. You get the idea.
The heat and overcrowding ultimately caused several of us to walk out, mid-game. Had we not all been drenched in sweat and frustrated from constantly tripping over one another it may have been enjoyable.
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