The Ultimate Escape Rooms - Solvang, California

Esperanza Vazquez

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Rishab Nagaraj

We did the Gold Rush escape room. We were told that this was of moderate difficulty but found it pretty hard. Especially as we didn't really have anything to start with, found some clues out of order and certain solutions felt random or like you needed a lot of prior knowledge. Having said that, we still had a great time! The staff were helpful, their hints were good and always led us in the right direction. Definitely a great way to spend an hour during the day!

Heather Luikart

Phantom of the Big Top is probably the best escape room I have done so far! All the puzzles were challenging without being frustrating or annoying. The room was well-maintained and highly enjoyable to explore. The staff was fun, and seemed to genuinely enjoy working there. We will definitely return!

Dolsmeister

This place was a blast! Such a great way to build teamwork with others and also a fun way to exercise your brain in a creative way.

Katie Smith

So fun! We did the gold rush and barely got out. The game master let us stay a little later cause we were so close to finishing. I'm not good at escape rooms, so we had to ask for lots of clues. The game master answered quickly and with a fun in-game accent. It was fun! I'd definitely come back!

jasmynen

We did the gold rush. The staff was very accommodating so I appreciate that!

The room itself was pretty well decorated, however the room was fairly small considering other places I’ve gone to for the same price. In addition, that room has a lot of herrings, or at least I think, we never found out. I found it really hard to navigate the room and there wasn’t a designated flow. Like the puzzles themselves weren’t connected to each other.

Alejandra Laboriel

Very fun and great first time experiencing an escape room. Went with a group of 7 and everyone had different roles to complete. The circus room was such a great room! Id highly recommend selecting that one! Great & friendly staff! They really explained the process to my group!

Trysten Cain

Friendly staff, nice location. For our trip their AC had been out for a week and the rooms were upstairs. They did their best with fans but it was a little rough.

As for the rooms, we did Mystery at the Big Top and Gold Fever. These were rooms #116 and #117 for my wife and I, who did these alone together.

Big Top is a mess of a room. They'll say it's their hardest with a 30% success rate, but mostly this is caused by many of the games/contraptions not being functional or a complete lack of guidance for the players to make probable connections. We were told we could just "use a hint" to completely skip over a game that was finicky. We had to unplug a machine that wasn't paying out despite us solving the puzzle, so the door would unlock. There were also instances where loose props/puzzles were expected to be kept in place so you knew where they were taken from else you could screw yourself out of knowing what clue info was associated. Even had we made it to the finish, we would have been forced to manhandle a massive chain through wooden doors which we watched the game master struggle with himself for a few minutes when showing us.

A room should never be constructed in a way that players can screw themselves or lock themselves out of completion. Items should be clearly defined so that if taken elsewhere it's clear how and what they are connected to. And obviously it's no fun if a game master has to continually provide hints or advise to ignore or skip things or say, "oh by the way this doesn't work or this is missing but it said this" etc.

Gold Fever was considerable better overall, which we completed in 38 minutes. There were still some issues where an item was stuck way too far behind where we needed to get it, a weighted puzzle that we had to carefully manually trigger as it is finicky and doesn't always work on it's own, and a final puzzle that required the game master to advise exactly what to do and what not to do else you would make it physically impossible to solve (which to be fair it's a neat little trick but...figure out how to make so people don't need such guidance and can't make a fatal mistake).