Room Escape Artist

Hold onto your butts

Location:  Orlando, FL

Date Played: February 27, 2023

Team Size: 1-8; we recommend ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Duration: 60 minutes

Price: $40-50 per player depending on time of day

Ticketing: Public

Accessibility Consideration:  None

Emergency Exit Rating: [A+] No Lock

Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints

REA Reaction

I’m just so disappointed in everything that Universal’s Great Movie Escape is doing, especially with Jurassic World. I’m not sure how anyone can mess up such an interesting plot with a convoluted and confusing escape room. Universal has proven themselves with incredible set and scenery design with jaw-dropping animatronics in multiple amusements and rides at their parks, but Jurassic World fell incredibly flat. While offering more – in set design, interactions, and story – than Back to the Future, each time we entered a new set, we were met with boring exposition and lengthy introductions to the puzzle mechanics, only to be told far too quickly what to do. There was no time to engage with the game.

On average, Jurassic World had slightly better sets than Back to the Future, but was still underwhelming considering what we know Universal is capable of creating. We may have experienced some of the worst user interfaces in any escape room, so bad that we were convinced one was broken for several minutes. The puzzles made us feel like we were constantly drinking from a firehose and did a horrible job at explaining within the bounds of the interactions how to actually solve them. There were a handful of exciting moments, yet the design of the game did not lend itself to get all players looking at the exciting moments. These were unfortunately easy to miss.

If you’re going to Universal, there are many escape room experiences scattered throughout the city, which are significantly more fun than anything you’ll experience at Universal’s Great Movie Escape. This isn’t a bad escape room for Universal, it is a bad escape room in general.

Who is this for?

• Any experience level
• Diehard Jurassic Park fans who probably enjoyed Jurassic Park 3

Why play?

• A cool theatrical moment. Just one, and even then, it was underwhelming.
• You feel like you just have to play a game at Universal’s Great Movie Escape

Story

Our team of geneticists found ourselves in a secret lab on Isla Nublar and were tasked with finding and stopping the apex predator who had broken free and was on its way to a tasty feast (us).

Setting

Jurassic World had multiple, varied sets that we traversed, including plain lab-inspired rooms, unsuccessful attempts at outdoor areas, and many others. These sets greatly ranged in quality from drab and boring to almost cool. Compared to Universal’s other projects in the parks, they were disappointing.

Gameplay

Universal’s Great Movie Escape’s Jurassic World: Escape was an escape room on rails, with forward progression and no returning to previous segments. This game is pipelined. Multiple teams play the experience at the same time, with a new team entering the first space once the previous team has progressed far enough.

The difficulty varied depending on how far we got in a task. The game pushed teams through to the next space even if they hadn’t solved all the puzzles.

Gameplay consisted of tedious, repetitive tasks or under-clued interactions that were continuously frustrating, with terrible interfaces. There were a small handful of actual layered puzzles beyond these tasks. These ‘puzzles’ consisted of observation, communication, making connections, and searching.

Analysis

➕/➖ There were bones of good interactions scattered throughout, littered with frustrating user interfaces and unclear instructions. With a little tweaking, many more in-game interactions would be fun and engaging, rather than frustrating.

➖ The user interfaces scattered throughout were unacceptably terrible. The fonts were too small and illegible and consoles had ‘buttons’ that didn’t look interactive. One of the rooms was so unintuitive that nobody in our team of 4 very experienced players could figure out how to interact with it, even after extensive ‘hinting’ by the automated audio.

➖ Cluing and gradual hinting was non-existent. If we weren’t making progress, even if we were actively inputting the answer, the game would tell us exactly what to do. These instructions didn’t even help in some parts of the experience. The video introductions to the rooms didn’t help either, with lengthy expositions that attempted to tell us how to complete an upcoming task.

➖ Some of the rooms gave us access to way too many elements at the same time, causing confusion without any gameplay gating. There was an overwhelming amount of information in other areas, forcing players to parse information way too quickly.

➖ The wear and tear on the game was unacceptable, with one of the puzzle interactions being much more difficult due to sticky and peeling paint. Considering these games had only been open for a few months at the point of this review, I cannot imagine how bad they will look in due time.

➕ There was one exciting team-based interaction in the middle of the game that we really enjoyed. The setting of this interaction had a really great visual effect that changed gameplay mechanics to make them more difficult, yet still fair.

➕ The audio engineering was good and fitting for the spaces. The sound system worked well and amped up exciting moments… but also, it’s impossible to screw up using a John Williams soundtrack.

➕/➖ Some of the sets were fun to explore and well designed, with boring sets between. They could have gone significantly further on the set design, but it looked good enough.

➖ One of the coolest moments of the game was a let down. Knowing what Universal can do with their resources, this was unfortunate and should have been enhanced.

➖ The ending script was tone deaf. Additionally, there was no boss fight or finale. This left our team feeling disappointed and unaccomplished.

➖ The game pushed our team through so quickly that we did not have enough time to finish each interaction and were constantly rushed. The game was listed as a 60-minute experience, and we were barely in it for 45 minutes, with puzzles and interactions being cut off before we could solve them.

Tips For Visiting

• Tickets to any of the Universal Great Movie Escapes come with free park parking for the day. This will get delivered as a QR code with the tickets, so be sure to look out for it.
• This is located on the Universal City Walk which has many food options. We recommend Voodoo Donuts and Cowfish.
• The on-site bar has some creative, funky cocktails. We loved all of the drinks we tried there.