Jazz Parlor is one of the best games in New Orleans. Here are our other recommendations for great escape rooms around New Orleans/Baton Rouge.
“It’s not the puzzles you play, it’s the puzzles you don’t play.”
Location: New Orleans, LA
Date played: October 7, 2017
Team size: 2-8; we recommend 3-4
Duration: 60 minutes
Price: $30 per ticket
Story & setting
The DeLaporte family hired a team of private investigators to aid in solving a murder that occurred within their estate. Could we wade through the evidence and unmask the criminal who committed this malevolent musical murder?
Escape My Room applied their trademark antique-estate-of-curiosities aesthetic to the Jazz Parlor. The set spanned a number of rooms within the sprawling DeLaporte home that houses all of Escape My Room’s experiences. It was decadent, highly detailed, and loaded with eccentricities of a bygone era.
Puzzles
The Jazz Parlor’s puzzling focused on carefully searching, building an understanding of the area around us, and manipulating that environment. Escape My Room conveyed narrative through notes, evidence, and interactions scattered throughout the set.
Standouts
Escape My Room’s DeLaporte Mansion had a distinctive and beautiful aesthetic. The cluttered and quirky decor was intriguing, but not chaotic or distracting. Escape My Room struck a delicate balance between busy and calm. Jazz Parlor was a fun space to explore.
Jazz Parlor had one particularly inventive room transition. We took a strange action – that was clued just enough – and it created something so unexpected.
Throughout Jazz Parlor we gathered pieces of a mystery by way of puzzling. By the time we made our escape, we felt like we’d also unraveled the whodunit. We appreciated their interwoven design.
Escape My Room wants players to spend an hour within their escape rooms. Should you finish early enough, a series of bonus puzzles present themselves.
Shortcomings
While we did unravel the mystery through gameplay, the puzzle flow was sometimes clunky. It wasn’t always clear, at any given moment, what puzzles were relevant. This, combined with a linear game flow, meant occasional hangups in puzzling.
While the escape room was mostly well kept up, one puzzle sequence was thwarted by wear.
Should I play Escape My Room’s Jazz Parlor?
As we explored Jazz Parlor, we unraveled a mystery. It unfolded with each subsequent puzzle solve. When we escaped with a win, it felt that much more complete.
Because at the start you begin to uncover both puzzles and context, it can be challenging to get your bearings in Jazz Parlor. Newer players will likely find Jazz Parlor challenging, but not impenetrable. Be patient. Look for oddities. The connections will come.
In Jazz Parlor, we stepped back in time, into the beautiful and quirky style of Escape My Room’s DeLaporte Mansion and into a fun story that felt quintessentially New Orleans.
Book your hour with Escape My Room’s Jazz Parlor, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.
Full disclosure: Escape My Room comped our tickets for this game.
