Breakin‘ Escape Rooms: Heist Plan

Heist Plan is fairly average room, full of lock and key style puzzles. Having done a few newer rooms that no longer use this style of puzzle (or use it minimally), it feels a little dated (even if it might be argued it’s partly thematic for the story of room). Finding keys and unlocking boxes just isn’t super fun, and quickly got repetitive.

The puzzles in this room were pretty simple overall and I’d recommend a group of 2-3 max, in order to get the most out of it. We had 6 people and it was too many as there wasn’t enough for us to do, without at least half of us standing around at any given time.

Some of puzzles in this room are a bit more physical, with a chain related puzzle being the highlight. Without giving away any spoilers, one other puzzle - easily the worst part of the room - had us controlling something which was absolutely NOT fun. Three different people tried it in our group, and at certain points we had to improvise in order to ‘fix’ the puzzle so we could continue playing it. It was a good idea on paper, but very poorly executed. Seemingly the main functioning item of the puzzle wasn’t operating properly, and needs to be replaced. Fortunately, after completing this puzzle the final challenge is at least a little more fun, if not the most taxing thing to work out. It did allow our younger group member to get involved though, which he enjoyed.

One other big complaint - the 60 minute timer wasn’t set in our room, so we had ZERO idea of how long we had left, or how long it took us to get our. We’re guessing 45 mins, but nobody came to tell us (assuming they were timing it) and the clock in our room just sat at 60:00 the whole time. Weirdly it eliminated any urgency we had, and made the whole thing a fairly leisurely experience…

However, outside of all that, arguably one of the things I think we liked least about this room was our host. They were the opposite of welcoming, were cold and just too officious. We heard the host for The Flying Dutchman was much better (and seemingly did a great job of adding to the experience), but our own host seriously effected the enthusiasm we had as a group. My son is autistic, and the host was fairly curt with him a few times, over the radio, when he touched things he shouldn't have done. A simple reminder, would've been far more appropriate.