Location: Herndon, VA

Players: 2-6 (We recommend 2-4)

Price: $28 per person

Time to Escape: 60 minutes

Rest Uneasy Hotel

Theme:

From the Escape Room Herndon Website:

You’re a team of paranormal investigators who have been requested by a hotel owner to investigate strange happenings inside the mysterious room 213. As soon as you enter the room you can sense that something else is going on. Before you can ask, your host has quickly left the room. As you hear the door lock, you realize you’ve been trapped. Can your team uncover the Mystery of Room 213?

First Impressions:

Escape Room Herndon boasts some of the best rooms in Virginia, and I love a spooky, haunted theme, so Room 213 became more highly anticipated as we adventured through their other rooms! Stepping into the ominously appointed hotel room, I couldn’t wait to see what creepy puzzling was in store for us!

High Points:

As always for a Ravenchase production, the set design of this room is great, encapsulating the theme within its walls perfectly, and oozing spookiness out of every pore. As we delved deeper into the room’s secrets, the set, utilizing the grimily gorgeous design as well as great lighting and sound effects, gradually became even more sinister and ominous. The storyline helps compound this feeling of uneasiness, and the more we discovered, the creepier the experience felt! Several of the larger props hide some real surprises that kept us on our toes until we finally escaped, never sure what was going to pop up next. All of this melded together during the climax, delivering an exciting finish to the room.

The room is very tactile, which I always love, with loads of interesting and theme relevant props to mess around with. Some we initially figured were just set dressing ended up being part of an incredibly creative puzzle that became one of my favorites on the day for its elegant simplicity and intuitiveness. This tactility and streamlined puzzling carries throughout the adventure, and though the room feels somewhat sparser than the other three at this location, it certainly remains an exciting experience to puzzle through! There is just enough technology integrated into the room to give off the spooky vibe via the enigmas within without overdoing it or including technology for technology’s sake, and the few jumps that are included are done expertly. The final bit of tech ties into the story fantastically, and helps cap off things nicely.

Low Points:

Though the room is sometimes non-linear, it felt mostly linear in our experience, leading to a few unfortunate choke points that stop up the action. At the same time, however, there are a couple moments at which groups can accidentally get ahead of themselves by solving certain puzzles before they are meant to, so a mite bit more gatekeeping in areas could help alleviate that problem. The game flow works well for the most part, but at times, there are some small logical leaps in which the connections break down, muddling the logical waters a bit. We enjoyed the story within the room, but at times, it felt as though the “why?” of the room was lost between the cracks, leaving a loose end here and there. Finally, though the room does ramp up the spookiness well, the puzzles overall don’t feel quite as exciting as some of Escape Room Herndon’s other rooms. However, this is still an excellent experience, which just speaks to how amazing the rooms here are!

Verdict:

Room 213 is an exciting haunted romp to adventure through, and although there are a few small bumps in the road here and there, they don’t detract overmuch from the experience. I absolutely recommend this room, as you cannot go wrong with any room at Escape Room Herndon; they’re all so fantastic! Book your time in the haunted hotel room here!

8/10 (Great)

Full Disclosure: Escape Room Herndon provided comped tickets for this room.