Gold Rush Review – The Escape Game (Orlando)

Striking Gold in Central Florida

Orlando has quickly become the premier city for high quality escape rooms in Florida – it makes sense, with so many attractions competing for your dollar you need to be special to rise above the fray. The Escape Game (Orlando) is a stand out in what is quickly becoming a saturated Central Florida escape room market. If you are in the Orlando area and looking for a thrilling ride that doesn’t require you to wait in the sun for hours, look no further than Gold Rush.

The Good

Multiple Rooms

When given the choice, more is almost always preferable to less when pertaining to the number of rooms available to interact with in an escape game. That’s not to say you can’t have an excellent single room escape game, you most certainly can, but it’s hard to beat the rush (no pun intended) you get when discovering a new area behind a hidden door or wall. Gold Rush features multiple unique spaces, each visually distinct yet consistent with the theme. Each room has excellent pacing, with just the right number of puzzles, that should leave most groups with enough time to make it to the final room. It’s never good spending 55 minutes in one area only to discover an entire new room to explore in the waning moments of the game, so the pacing in Gold Rush should be commended.

Cool Puzzles

The puzzles in Gold Rush are a mix of cool technology and impressive ingenuity. Each of the 3 spaces have interesting – theme appropriate puzzles that are also a blast to solve. We did encounter 1 puzzle that we’ve seen different versions of in other escape rooms but it felt especially appropriate for Gold Rush and didn’t mind the new twist here.

The Not So Good

Murphy’s Law States – Sometimes Things Break

My 1 gripe with our experience with Gold Rush is the result of something that plagues every escape room business from time to time – broken or missing set pieces which affect the outcome of the game. In our case there was a broken lock to 1 of the puzzles in the final room that gave us access to a key much earlier than the game designers intended. This eliminated the need to complete 1 of the final puzzles, and I have to be honest, we were REALLY looking forward to figuring that 1 out. Our game master didn’t seem to notice this error until we got stuck trying to solve a puzzle that we already had the item for. Fortunately the mistake didn’t completely ruin our experience with Gold Rush but it did shorten our overall time with this excellent room.

Closing

Gold Rush is a top-tier escape room located in the heart of Central Florida’s burgeoning escape room market, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a more complete experience. Groups of all experience levels should have a blast – with just enough challenge to keep enthusiasts engaged but not hard enough to frustrate the novice. While certainly not perfect, the positives far outweigh the negatives with this room and it certainly deserves a gold star. (I couldn’t help myself). 4/5