Review: The Grapevine Escape - Going to the Chapel

RATING: 4 Keys RESULT: Win REMAINING: 10:45

🎵 Goin’ to the chapel, and we’re gonna maybe get married. 🎵

Story

Welcome, friends and relatives, to the wedding of Myra Bentley and Dave Westbrook. Its beautiful outside, and the celebration of love is about to begin. This should be a happy, joyous time…. but it is FAR from it. As soon as you enter the chapel, it is extremely evident there is tension at the altar. The way things stand now, there won’t be a wedding today. Or will there? Maybe, as guests of the bride and groom, you can convince them to remember why they stand together at the altar. Search for clues and remind the party of moments that make them happy. Maybe, just maybe, this disaster can be turned around and make a wedding happen today!

This is one of those cases where escape room is a misnomer. Instead of trying to flee a situation, we are trying to convince the bride and groom not to escape. Hopefully this wedding ends with tying the knot.

As we find the reasons that the once-happy couple should stay together, the story about their past organically unfolds. We also learn why there is currently tension at the altar. Short of having live actors, The Grapevine Escape has found a clever and unique way to conduct the ceremony. Honestly, I was skeptical at first, but this is one wedding that I will never forget.

Scenic

Going to the Chapel takes place in a single room … probably so there is nowhere for the bride to run off to. The chapel is decorated to feel like a small-town church. The walls are white with a few decorations such as candle holders and ribbons.

There are three rows of pews with bibles and even small details like a tissue box … for the crying guests. The pulpit in front of the priest contains a couple of hymnals, and the back of the church has old pictures of both the bride and the groom along with all of the wedding presents.

Obviously, the thing that sticks out the most in Going to the Chapel are the television displays around the room. Instead of using live actors, there is prerecorded footage for the wedding attendants. While it would have been more immersive to have actors in the room, I was impressed with how seamlessly this solution worked. The Grapevine Escape took a risk, and it payed off.

Puzzles

Going to the Chapel had a good mix of scavenging, pattern matching, and logic puzzles, and most steps were in-theme. We had to flip through hymnals, open wedding gifts, and ultimately convince Myra and Dave why they should stay together.

Sure, some of the wedding gifts had locks on them, and though I’ve never seen that at any wedding I’ve been to, it adds to the hokey charm. One puzzle required the dreaded black light, but despite these small clichés, everything was intuitive and connected to the narrative.

The computer resting on the gift table is the most important part of the game’s mechanics because this is how we communicated with the wedding attendants, and we could select a specific person to talk to including the priest. Everything we typed was greeted with an appropriate response, so we knew whether or not we were on the correct path. It was a fun and clever technique that even incorporated some humor.

Overall

Going to the Chapel is a unique theme where we try to make the bride and groom not escape. As we talk to the wedding attendants via computer, we remind the couple of trips they took together along with other fond memories. Escape rooms rarely elicit laughter, but they were even able to effectively incorporate humor into the game.

The Grapevine Escape has definitely taken a risk with Going to the Chapel. The presentation and game’s mechanics are different than anything we had seen previously. With that being said, their risk paid off by producing a fun and engaging room that stands out from the pack. Every puzzle built onto the story of Myra and Dave’s relationship and what brought them to the altar in the first place. Luckily, this ceremony ended with wedding bells.