RATING: 1 Key          RESULT: Win          REMAINING: 6:30

On our way out the front door, trying our best not to peel the blue painters tape artfully transformed into an apparent maze design, the owner herself asked us personally to write this review, adding, “but please don’t talk about all the bad stuff.” Let’s see how that goes, shall we?

We picked this game literally minutes before playing it. Just a quick glance at the website made it easy for us to decide which of the two rooms appealed most to us – choice #1 was Unlicensed Walking Dead IP Escape Room™, and the other was The Movie Theater.

Hey! A unique theme! We’re in.

Let’s see what else their website has to say about it – “You are out to the movies with your friends and family,” – Great! This should be fun. It continues, “when suddenly you find out that a bomb has been set to explode in one hour,”

Crap. We just got tricked into yet another defuse the bomb game.

Alright – might as well see what the rest of the story has to say – “and you are locked in and the only way out of certain death is” … you know what? I cannot pretend to be interested in reading the rest.

The Movie Theater is comprised of a rather large rectangular room, a closet and a small second room that – I just have no idea – it’s a break room? Maybe? Listen, it cannot possibly be on me to try to make sense of what was created here.

Part of the main room is filled with movie theater seats – an attention to detail we appreciated. They sit in front of a very small projection screen, which for some reason is showing Hotel Transylvania.

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I’ve never actually seen the movie Hotel Transylvania. However, I can tell you with certainty your time will be much better off in this game sitting in one of the provided chairs and watching it for an hour.

In the back of the room, you’ll find several bookshelves, because movie theater, a half-height “wall” naturally lit with Christmas lights, because movie theater, and a popcorn machine – actually full of popcorn, with a note that says “Free, please eat some.”

Now, sure it’s not a black windowless van labeled “FREE CANDY,” and it’s no secret that I do love popcorn. My mouth watered at the thought of abandoning this nonsense game and eating some.

And then I looked around the room again. Yeah – the best course of action for the longevity of my healthy future is to not consume any food item prepared by the venue that created this world I’m trapped in.

So now I’m annoyed *and* I want popcorn. See, kids? It can get worse.

Upon entering, we were instructed with gusto that the only way to play the game is to “just solve the puzzles clockwise around the room.”

Let that sink in for a moment.

That’s right, folks. The puzzle at 1:00 leads to the puzzle at 3:00 leads to the puzzle at 5:00 and so on.

This isn’t an escape room. It’s a convoluted IKEA instruction manual – and trust me – I’ve put together IKEA furniture, and I can still say the furniture is more fun.

So, we dutifully followed the instructions we were given. We solved puzzles clockwise around the room, and sure enough, each did lead to the next. About halfway through the game, we bumped into the strangers we were paired with at the start. They’d been off operating outside of our team-effort from the moment the clock started ticking. We were shocked to find out they had been working on our next clockwise step for roughly fifteen minutes already.

How could that be possible? You have to solve the room clockwise to get the next piece!

Except you don’t. They picked up a book on a shelf and found clear puzzle markings within – and started to decipher it. Everything we had done – by following the clear instruction we were given – was a complete waste of our time. We could have just picked up a random book and skipped half the game.

How do the kids do it in their Cellular Textings? “SMH?”

SMH.

Eventually we find ourselves in the second room, which has couches, because movie theater, and an air hockey table, because movie theater, and…

 HOLD ON A MINUTE – THIS AIR HOCKEY TABLE ACTUALLY WORKS.

So that’s the story of the escape room so bad that we just stopped trying and, while the clock ticked away, played a full game of air hockey instead. And we still escaped with 6:30 remaining, which we were told was “a record.”

Myrtle Beach Room Escape is truly an unreal experience from start to finish – and trust me, I’m using that term in the worst possible way. I suppose to fully paint the picture, we should start at the beginning. As mentioned, this visit was a last minute plan. We called the venue to confirm availability before heading over, as we were unable to use their online booking system so close to game time. On their confirmation, we made our way to the venue, and were told we could just pay for our tickets in person since the booking for that time slot already closed online.

Upon arriving, we walked past the awkwardly hand-painted barber’s pole (?) and opened the door clearly marked by an attempted maze design literally constructed by sticking blue painter’s tape onto the glass. We stepped onto the bright lime green concrete floor with sloppy graffiti covering every square inch of it. We met the owner’s three dogs, one of which was dyed pink. Here’s the thing – none of these points are even actually the real problem with their professionalism (though they surely didn’t help matters.)

It was at this point we were told they only accept cash. We asked them why, in our prior phone conversation, wherein they told us we could pay upon arrival, they never mentioned that. We were told that we “should have just known that.”

Oh.

Neither of us carry cash. They literally were going to send us home, until I suggested we just go online and buy tickets to a different game time. And to be clear, all of that chaos occurred before we began.

The scenic presentation inside the game was no less disheveled than the lobby. And the puzzles were bad. It’s not that they weren’t intuitive, because for the most part, they were. But they were not at all fun.

Afterward, they tried to get us to stick around to graffiti the floor. They insisted we had to, “to celebrate.” We politely declined.  On our way out the door, the owner literally followed us to our car, asking if we’d please write a review. She literally – I swear to you, literally – looked at us and said word for word, “but please don’t talk about all the bad stuff.”

I’ll tell you what – had I actually followed her advice, writing this review would have taken up a whole lot less time.

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Venue:  Myrtle Beach Room Escape

Location: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina

Number of Games: 2

GAME SPECIFIC INFORMATION:

Duration: 60 minutes

Capacity: 10 people

Group Type: Public / You may be paired with strangers.

Cost: $25 per person