Two disclaimers: 1.) Isabel will be writing the review for this room as Ben was dubious about the originality of the room and refused to pay again; 2.) Ben and I have done this room already when it was called “Ghost Ship“.

Consequently, I will be writing my review from the perspective of someone who’s done the 2016 versions of EXIT’s rooms, while Isabel from a fresh set of eyes.

The staff members were hospitable enough.

When we were unable to complete the room, they refused to show us what the remainder of the room would have been. This was the proverbial rubbing salt to the wound: I just paid money to do a room I was duped to do again under the lure it was going to be a new and original room–it wasn’t.

 ISABEL

Wow. I really liked Exit Calgary’s lobby. I hate feeling squished when waiting for a room to begin, that was not the case with this establishment. The lobby is pretty flashy but also quite comfortable, definitely made me want to spend time in there. Not going to lie, I got a bit more excited to do the room when I saw the lights and décor as we approached the establishment.

The gamemasters were pretty friendly upon arrival, making small chat but did not go above and beyond to make our experience there stand out from other companies.

The Lost Ship’s Buccaneer Bay’s puzzles were typical of EXIT’s puzzles: Solve a word  riddle and get the 4-word combination to open a lock; or look around the room and decipher some sort of pattern; or manipulate the order of the props and take a step back to see an ambiguous message.

There was beauty here, but it was blemished by improper setup and lazy quality control. There were hooks missing, hooks that wouldn’t stay on, manipulable clock hands that shouldn’t have been. This room was falling apart.

When brought up to the staff post-game, they sheepishly smirked and shrugged with a simple “Oh.”

The puzzles in this room definitely stuck to the theme of being on a pirate ship. They also had some clever puzzles that I haven’t seen in an escape room before, so kudos.

Having said that, there were a couple of different puzzles that weren’t set up properly for us during our escape. One of them was also missing a piece, which led to a lot of confusion and ultimately stopped us in our progress. It was pretty disappointing as it took away from the experience as a whole.

I let out a soft “damn” under my breath when the door first opened. As in–“Damn, this room looks exactly the same as The Lost Ship and I can’t believe I just wasted my money.”

This room gets a 4 in this area. Although there was some attempt at transforming it, the walls, ceilings, railings, cabinets, drawers, lights, and music are practically identical to what it looked before. #moneygrab

EXIT did a decent enough job designing the rooms to make you feel like you’re on a pirate ship. They designed the rooms to showcase different parts of the ship. It would be easy to get hung up on throwing you into a room cluttered with pirate bounty and leaving it at that.

There’s pirate music playing over the speakers while you complete this room. Beware, you may be tempted to grab a bottle o’ rum and pillage the gamemasters.

The Lost Ship was one of the best experiences Ben and I had in 2016. We were spooked and shooketh by how masterful the room married a chilling atmosphere with an unforgettable story and sensible puzzles. It was all there.

Needless to say I wasn’t into Buccaneer Bay.

As I mentioned before, we had some “technical difficulties” with some of the puzzle setup in our room. We ended up accidentally interacting with a part of the room that contained important information… when changed it was no longer able to give us the clue we needed.

If you’re going to have this in a room, make sure the object is glued down, covered, etc, in some way so that it can’t be altered.

Another one of our puzzles was missing a piece, which caused us to do the entire puzzle several times. These types of mistakes can make or break your experience in an escape room, so I was disappointed to experience this here.

We were completing this room with a first time escapee as well, so the issues that arose during the escape kind of left them with a mediocre first time experience.

Rewording the title of the room and tweaking the story doesn’t really count as substantial or meaningful changes.

The pirate ship theme remained the same–just attached to an inferior room.

Pirates. Bloody pirates.

I’m not really blown away by this general theme anymore (thanks a lot Obama… I mean, Disney). I know it lends itself to escape rooms and Exit did a nice job of tailoring their puzzles to the whole pirate theme, but I’m a little less drawn to generic room themes now that I’ve seen some pretty stellar original ideas. 

I give this room a #coal – if you’ve done The Lost Ship: It was like watching a low-quality sequel?… an unnecessary reboot?… an inferior remake? to a favorite movie you’ve already seen and experienced. There’s no point going through it again.

This gets a #silver. I can’t really get past the issues with the room setup, it’s a peeve of mine because it takes away from the experience as a whole… and, well, makes it difficult to escape.

You can tell EXIT has worked hard to put this room together, but a room falls short if you have setup issues, in my opinion.