Room Escape Artist

Chugging right along

Location:  Austin, TX

Date Played: April 24, 2024

Team Size: 3-7; we recommend 2-4

Duration: 70 minutes

Price: $45 per player

Ticketing: Private

Accessibility Consideration:  No considerations that we can think of

Emergency Exit Rating: [A+] No Lock

Physical Restraints: [A+] No Physical Restraints

REA Reaction

As a limited edition holiday game, I didn’t have high expectations for this experience, but I left with a warm heart and an unusual level of giddiness. My teammate, on the other hand, was bogged down by some of its flaws. After a lengthy debate, our impressions simply came down to how much we weighted the different aspects of the game.

Ostensibly, the simplistic train set was adequate but underwhelming compared to other Escape Hour experiences. For me, this served as an effective backdrop for highlighting the game’s more impressive aspects. There was more than meets the eye here, leading to a joyful set of discoveries. For my teammate, this first impression was difficult to overcome; he never gained a solid sense of place.

We both agreed that the gameplay was uneven. Most puzzles were fair and fine, but they ran the gamut from glaringly obvious to avoidably ambiguous, sometimes suffering from multiple interpretations that were tedious to test out. This tried our patience and interrupted our flow.

In this context, I was shocked to discover perhaps a new all-time favorite puzzle for myself. The mental transition from enjoying a particular interaction to ascribing more meaning to it was absolutely delightful. I’ve rarely felt more joyful in an escape room. My teammate wasn’t as impressed, but I still feel so happy just thinking about it. If whimsy, wackiness, sensory thrills, and divergent thinking appeal to you, you might like it, too.

I hope Hijack on the Holiday Express sticks around through another Christmas season. For me, its highlights outweighed its flaws, and I would consider bringing friends back (to try) to share the joy with them.

Who is this for?

• Christmas fans
• Any experience level

Why play?

• To enhance your Christmas season, or to enhance any season by adding some Christmas
• For a standout moment of pure delight

Story

Shortly into the annual toy-delivery mission of the Holiday Express, the train came to a grinding halt. It was up to us to fix the train and save Christmas.

Setting

We found ourselves in the cabin of the Holiday Express, a convincing though simply adorned environment. The room had a playful, almost childlike aesthetic that evolved in welcome ways throughout the experience.

Gameplay

Escape Hour Austin’s Hijacked on the Holiday Express was a standard escape room with a moderate level of difficulty.

Gameplay involved searching, observing, and making connections. The most difficult puzzles were process-heavy and involved a bit of trial-and-error to validate the process.

Analysis

➕ The set was simple yet functional. I thought its production value was concentrated in exactly the right places for maximum effect.

➖ One pre-game instruction to prevent damage to the set conflicted with a necessary interaction.

➕ Whether intentionally or not, part of the set misled me in a way that made a later discovery much more surprising and delightful.

➖ Two involved puzzles suffered from multiple interpretations of the instructions, forcing us to experiment with different paradigms of interpretation. This turned the fun of figuring out what to do into a repetitious slog.

➕ The sparse environment found a particularly innovative way to hide information and an equally innovative way to find it.

➕ The game included a truly magical mechanism that we loved interacting with…much more than we needed to.

➖ In its effort to avoid misinterpretation, the final puzzle felt overly explained, leaving us mostly to just go through motions. It didn’t quite match the momentum of the moment.

Tips For Visiting

• Escape Hour Austin now has two locations, both within the same business complex. Hijacked on the Holiday Express is at the newer location, 2113 Wells Branch Pkwy Suite 6700, NOT Suite 4300.
• There is plenty of parking.
• For food, visit El Huarache right around the corner, and order sopes. We’re sope connoisseurs, and these are our favorites in Texas.

Book your hour with Escape Hour Austin’s Hijacked on the Holiday Express, and tell them that the Room Escape Artist sent you.

Disclosure: Escape Hour Austin provided media discounted tickets for this game.