Ben wrote his review first, so he said most of what I had to say concerning service. I’ve said this many times before in my previous reviews of Time Escape rooms, but they really are the friendliest, nicest, most genuine people you’ll ever meet.

BEN

We did this room as a group of 6. When we called to book, the staff member who picked up recognized Mr. P’s voice and offered to give us an extra 15 minutes! Firstly – wow, great voice recognition! And second, that’s so nice of them! It was completely unexpected and just took me by surprise, but it really shows how committed Time Escape is to providing a good experience to their customers.

There was a good mix of brain teasers, puzzle connections, and traditional puzzles. They were all cleanly executed, which is consistent with Time Escape. My main concern is that I found the centrepiece puzzle to be tedious, because there were too many components to connect that it became convoluted. Overall, there was some creativity here, but there was also a lot of generic.

Wow. The puzzles in this room were some of the most complicated I’d ever seen. This room definitely lives up to its difficulty rating.

Instead of having lots of small puzzles, this room had a few puzzles that required you to synthesize a lot of information. With puzzle designs like this, it can be tough to feel like you’re making progress because you’re not opening lots of locks. Because we had a larger group though, there was plenty of back and forth about how to solve the puzzles, which meant that there was still puzzle-solving going on.

The centrepiece puzzle in this room was really cool – it’s definitely a new way of handling and manipulating materials.

I agree with Ben. I was disappointed that the room looked very bare and white when we walked in. I was hoping it would be different as we progressed along the room, but it was all white. I was surprised because from my personal experience, I’ve always been wowed by how Time Escape rooms look. Yes, while this was appropriately white (as it is set in a lab), there was no attempt at variation.

This room was a bit too bare for me. When I think “lab” I think of something much messier  than this room. Maybe I’ve just been in really messy labs?

I think Ben hit the nail on the head with this one. Because we were working in a larger group, my experience was diluted because I was often relegated to the sideline instead of doing the bulk of the work. I realize that this isn’t the room’s fault necessarily. However, because of how the room looked and the level of creativity in the puzzles, I’m likely to believe that my level of immersion would still be the same if it were just Ben and I doing the room.

There wasn’t anything special done in this room to keep me super engaged. I think part of it may have been because we were working in a larger group, which means I was doing less than I would be if Mr. P and I were doing a room with just the two of us.

This was one of the better lab-themed rooms we’ve done (and we’ve done quite a fair few). If you ever took chemistry in high school, prepare to encounter the same props and manipulate and interact with them in different ways.

Lab themes are strangely abundant. Whenever there’s a theme that’s done a lot, I look for something that separates out a room from the rest of the others within the same theme. For Lethal Virus, I think its centrepiece puzzle is what separates it out from the rest – it’s different and memorable for sure.

I give this room a #gold. There were times when solving puzzles became a chore, rather than an urgent task that needed to be done. The look of the room also left something to be desired. However, overall, they did a solid job with a generic theme.

I give this room a #gold. There’s lots to work on, which hopefully means no one will just be standing around watching!