The Damsels Conquer Pandora’s Box

It had been a little while since the Daring Damsels had conquered an escape room, and we were itching to do it again. After a little bit of research, we decided to visit one of the first venues we ever tried, Trapped, for their Pandora’s Box room. Remember, Readers, we conquered their X-13 room back at the start of this blog. It was a favorite, with vests added in and roles assigned. I honestly can’t believe it took us this long to come back. But so many rooms, so little time, right?

The room is advertised on the website as having a truly immersive design. I know most escape rooms advertise that they are immersive; it is a key catch phrase for entertainment venues right now. Some of them put “immersive” in their descriptions when all you do is walk into a room. But I digress. This one advertised itself as having “sound, lighting, and other effects that make you feel like you’ve been transported into another world.” It has a warning about heat, water, and strobes, too. So now I was curious. They also mentioned adaptive gameplay, meaning that if you finish the room faster than expected, there are more puzzles. The idea is that you can keep playing and not know you should have stopped. Since we sometimes do finish super fast, this seemed exciting too.

So off we went to Trapped, to become explorers and help discover the secrets hidden inside Pandora’s Box. But of course, first we had to watch the videos. The intro video in the lobby was generic. Don’t climb things, don’t force locks, blah blah. Then they led us into a staging room-type area for the room-specific videos. Once they started to play, I was reminded strongly of the Indiana Jones ride at Disneyland. They had the same old timey, projector-type feel. The actor even joked with us about whether we had brought our own projector or if he had to set one up.

He did a very good job, by the way. He was only with us in person for the first couple of minutes, but he was on the loudspeaker, in character, throughout the entire game. He had lines to give as well as the normal hints, and he nailed them.

So we learn that the good explorer, Max Fortune, has discovered Pandora’s Box and has it at his home. But his Arch-Nemesis is coming to steal it and release its evil power on the world. You have to find it and harness the power first. Ok, we can do that. Sounds fun. So here we go!

Props & Decor:

The room was very well decorated. It felt like being in an explorer’s not-too-messy attic. The Pandora’s Box prop is much bigger than expected, but its size is definitely relative to its importance to the puzzles. I won’t describe it much more than that, because I don’t want to spoil it, but suffice it to say that it is the star of the attraction.

The actor told us in advance that lighting would be used to help us know which puzzle parts were being used at a particular time. It was not glaringly obvious; we would not have seen it if we hadn’t been told to look for it. But I think that was a good thing. Too much would have taken away from the mood. None of the areas were too dark, but we did have one issue. In some of the puzzles, if one person stands in certain places, they can block the puzzle entirely. Now, for the two of us, this wasn’t much of an issue. The Dragon just told me to move, and I did. Problem solved. But if six people were moving around in the room, I could see that as being a bit problematic.

My favorite part of this room, however, is not something you can see at first glance. It is the invisible special effects. You will experience weather changes, things falling that you don’t expect to fall, and all of them are synced perfectly to the progress of the group through the puzzles. I have never been in an escape room with so many special effects before! I’m not even sure most haunts I’ve been through have that many. I will give you this hint. Wear layers, like a long sleeve that ties around the waist over a short-sleeved shirt. You will want both settings as the game goes on.

Puzzles:

The puzzles were varied and fun, with most of them being fairly intuitive. We needed hints a few times, but once they were given, the “ah ha” moment was apparent. So no big problems there. Nothing was broken that we could tell, which should be basic common sense. But since one of the most expensive rooms we visited had a central puzzle broken just enough to be infuriating, I feel like I need to mention it everywhere now. There were a couple of puzzles that we solved by accident. One of them, I just pushed a couple of buttons to see if they even did anything, and “pop,” the puzzle was solved. In another case, I felt like the game master heard me say that I can’t stand a particular type of puzzle, and I was kinda frustrated, and he may have given it to me. I can’t prove that, of course. It may have been a coincidence. But even if it was true, I give him props for customer service. Some guests just don’t mesh with certain types of puzzles.

But the Adaptive puzzle style is what I would like to talk about the most. I have never played a room that advertises this style before. I believe I could tell when the room could have ended, if we had been noobs, or just not very good at escape rooms. But I also didn’t feel like the room had to end there. This room had me so involved that I was actually not checking our time throughout. So I’m not sure how quickly we would have escaped if we had been done then. The puzzles that followed were cleverly hidden, so people would not feel they had missed anything. They didn’t keep us from escaping, as he guided us from one to the other, so we finished the game before the end. In my opinion, this is an excellent style for customer satisfaction. I learned during my time at an escape room that rooms get better reviews from customers who win. But at the same time, they don’t win so quickly, they feel like they didn’t get their money’s worth. This style allowed for just that.

Theme:

This theme was a bit basic at first. Explorer-type games are common; we have played a few already. The Indiana Jones style lends itself perfectly to escape rooms. He solves puzzles to reach a heroic goal, well now so do we.  And we have played a couple that mess with mythology before, also. They lend to good set building and characterization, as old Gods are fun characters. But the Pandora’s Box being already captured led to an interesting twist. We were not exploring the hidden tomb or pyramid; we were exploring the treasure itself. That was fun.

oooh, Indiana Jones and Pandora’s Box. That would make a good movie. If they hadn’t started getting worse and worse recently. But that’s a different rant.

The room kept to the theme very well. All of the puzzles were presented in a way that could have been used in that time period. They even presented a new type of combination lock, one I had never seen before. This lock has pyctographs instead of numbers and is bronzed, so it fits in with the decor perfectly. The other locks were key types. I appreciate this, as a modern combination lock would have stuck out like a sore thumb.

Overall:

I liked this room a lot. It was creative, well thought out, and very immersive. The special effects were amazing. And while there may have been small things in each category I might have changed, the room as a whole was pretty much perfect. The whole was much more than the sum of its parts.  I couldn’t stop raving about it to my coworkers. When I left, I immediately wanted to go back and play their remaining room. I think if we didn’t have other fun plans, I might have done just that. As is, we might be going back to play this weekend. Much recommended!!