RATING: 0 Keys RESULT: Win REMAINING: not timed
“Life, uh, finds a way… to turn one of the greatest film franchises of all time into one of the worst escape games you could ever imagine.”
-Dr. Ian Malcom, after playing Universal’s Great Movie Escape, probably.
Find yourself in a secret genetics lab on Isla Nublar and use your wits to solve a serious problem: an apex predator has broken free and is headed your way. This escape room has more teeth (and claws) than anything you’ve experienced before.
Welcome to Jurassic World: Escape. (And if you’re thinking that title is a bit on the nose, well, perhaps they just “needed something scary and easy to pronounce.”)
Groups join the adventure framed as InGen’s newest hires, greeted enthusiastically on screen by Riley. Now, if you don’t remember who Riley is, that’s probably because the character has absolutely nothing to do with the Jurassic Park / World franchise. Rather than making use of the wealth of established, recognizable faces across the Jurassic sphere, Universal’s Great Movie Escape instead ops to just make one up. “Clever girl.”
As new hires, one can expect to be responsible for reasonable tasks such as feeding the assets, and, advanced DNA splicing. You know, very logical entry-level involvement. But this is merely the start of Jurassic World: Escape’s complete disregard for a coherent narrative flow. At one point, a velociraptor breaks free from its cage. One might assume, in this pseudo-theme park environment, that such an event could be the catalyst to a classic dose of “and then something goes terrible wrong” branded chaos. Nope. That raptor is quickly forgotten, and never referenced again.
Perhaps its our fault for expecting a compelling story from an officially licensed attraction based on some of the greatest films of all time, but instead, “God help us, we’re in the hands of engineers.”
Much like John Hammond, Universal’s Great Movie Escape “spared no expense,” using a massive budget that some have claimed could be more than a million dollars per game. That, combined with such iconic worlds is the sort of thing we live for.
“Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should.” We’d be hard-pressed to identify a greater misuse of budget than the scenic presentation throughout the majority of Jurassic World: Escape. Summed up in a single word: generic.
Plain, industrial “theming” does the bare minimum to dress very small, always cramped rooms throughout this experience. The simple fact is that apart from the occasional branded T-rex icon on a tv screen, if you were randomly dropped into one of these rooms and not given any context, you’d almost certainly be unable to identify you’re standing somewhere in the Jurassic universe.
What’s the first thing that comes to mind when you think about Jurassic World? (We’ll pause here for you to scream “dinosaurs!” at the screen.) And once again, Dr. Malcom summed this up better than we ever could: “Ah, now eventually you do plan to have dinosaurs on your, on your dinosaur tour, right? Hello?”
If you’ve come to Jurassic World: Escape hoping to personally encounter any dinosaurs whatsoever, you’re about to be massively disappointed. (Honestly though, that’s still happening regardless.) At the risk of spoiling something that is inherently already spoiled by design, the closest thing to a physical dinosaur to be found at Universal’s Great Movie Escape is a vacuform panel implied to be the close-up eye of the Indominous Rex. Just like in the movie?
There was a moment we actually considered covering both of the games at Universal’s Great Movie Escape within a single review. Though that is not Escape Authority’s style, we as a team struggled with how to break things up when all of the same problems exist consistently in each. As such, please forgive us if some of this puzzles section feels a bit familiar.
Just like Back to the Future: OUTATIME, this game is full of some of the most poorly thought out, sometimes unintuitive and tedious puzzles we’ve ever come across in even the worst escape games. Tasks are repetitive and often just boring. Imagine our thrill hearing Riley suggest “now everybody switch stations to see how fun it is!”
Universal’s Great Movie Escape makes no effect to embrace the ‘ah ha!’ moment of puzzle solving satisfaction, and instead opts for tasks seemingly designed to just grate at a player’s patience. Have you ever wished you could hurriedly read small labels on hundreds of vials of embryos, all while the glass in front of them erratically pulses between transparent and opaque? Just like in the movie?
It all culminates in the Jurassic World control room – much smaller than cameras ever made it look on screen – where, of course, support systems are failing all over the park. But don’t worry! New hires have the chance to be the hero of this story by simply entering all sorts of arbitrary and nonsensical points of data into a touch screen, such as how many Jurassic World guests are currently playing golf. It’s literally the escape game version of an annoying website CAPTCHA verification.
And then there’s our closing point from our first review of this venue, which very much bears repeating: To allow for multiple groups simultaneously playing within its completely linear flow, it should come as no surprise that pretty much everything involves pushing buttons that do not require reset. Here’s the thing – we don’t generally dislike that style; in fact, some of our favorite games actually utilize this operational model, and do it well. But not Universal’s Great Movie Escape.
These games are some of the only instances we’ve ever had of genuinely feeling like the puzzles are just entirely inconsequential.
Solve something quickly? Congratulations; you get to stand around for the next several minutes until it’s time for the door to open. Don’t solve a puzzle at all? Well turn that frown upside down, little fella; the door is still opening for you at the exact same time. And with puzzles that are, across the board, just not fun at all, why even try?
If we sound uncharacteristically angry when discussing this venue, there’s actually a really good reason for it. Given its location within CityWalk, adjacent to both Universal Studios Florida and Universal’s Islands of Adventure, Universal’s Great Movie Escape is uniquely positioned to make it one of the venues that is most openly accessible to new players anywhere in the entire world. Given the quality of these experiences, that is a major problem.
Although our passion for escape games brought us together at Escape Authority, the simple reality is this is still a relatively new form of entertainment. There are still a lot of people out there who have no idea what an escape game even is. But now, they’re on vacation at Universal Orlando Resort – a brand they know and trust – and come across this new-to-them form of entertainment. They may not have been so inclined to try a local escape game back home, but, it’s Universal! That comes with an established brand trust.
We’d suggest it’s highly likely that those first time players, who’s entire exposure to this industry we all love, will likely never want to try another escape game. That’s the impact this venue may have. That very well could be the legacy. Universal’s Great Movie Escape is bad for the industry as a whole.
But once again, Dr. Malcom surmises this much more concisely for us: “God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates an unforgivably terrible escape game.” Women, if you’re still open to inheriting the earth, you can have it.
Mr. Hammond, after careful consideration, I’ve decided, not to endorse your escape game.
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Venue: Universal’s Great Movie Escape
Location: Orlando, Florida
Number of Games: 2
GAME SPECIFIC INFORMATION:
Duration: 45 minutes
Capacity: 6 people (8 for private bookings)
Group Type: Public or Private / You may or may not be paired with strangers depending on your choice of ticket type.
Cost: Ranges between $39.99 – $64.99 per person, or $240 – $390 per group for private bookings, depending on time and date selected.
