Mission: Mars Review – The Escape Game (Orlando)

A Truly Unique Experience

This review is from 2017, but Mission: Mars is still alive and well at The Escape Game (Orlando).

Cue the video intro – as The Escape Game (Orlando) will tell you, Getting to Mars was the easy part. Our fearless explorers, the Escape Junkies, found that out the hard way as we got ourselves into a bit of a jam when we wrecked our spacecraft during our descent onto the famous red planet. If we wanted to get back home (let’s face it, not a single one of us Junkies is a suitable replacement for Matt Damon’s character in The Martian), we needed to work together to repair our ship, launch ourselves off of that desolate planet, and escape the harmful radiation that was headed our way aiming to seal our fate.

The Good

The room pulls you into the story from start to finish, featuring a quality production value you would expect to be associated with higher end attractions in Orlando. This even includes interactions with Mission Control as you try and ‘right your ship’. The experience consists of multiple areas and you are tasked with gaining access to the command center and making the repairs necessary to escape back to Earth. While the first area is a little cramped if you are at the maximum limit of 8 people, space quickly becomes more plentiful as the mission progresses. As advertised, the experience makes full use of numerous touch screens and digitally interactive items found throughout your mission, the majority of which were fairly intuitive, even for our eldest Junkie.

With all that being said, interesting story lines and high production quality are meaningless if the puzzles (the true star of any escape experience) fail to shine in the same manner. Fortunately, the puzzles encountered during your mission are up to the task. Consisting of a good mix of classic escape room concepts with some interesting new takes made possible though the room’s ample technology, Mission: Mars delivers a unique puzzle solving experience.

The Not So Good

Mission: Mars has few downfalls and if I’m being honest, it took me a while to come up with anything I didn’t remember fondly other than the drive to Orlando. As the traffic isn’t The Escape Game (Orlando)’s fault, it’s hard to consider that a negative. There was one puzzle solution we encountered during our mission that was completely unexpected when compared against the rest of the experience. However, it led our team to one of the most memorable moments we’ve experienced during an escape.

Closing

I considered myself a seasoned escape room practitioner by the time the Escape Junkies embarked on this journey. Walking into Mission: Mars, I didn’t anticipate being blown away by the experience. What I expected to be a gimmicky room billed as a high-tech, no-locks experience turned into one of my favorite escapes to date. 5/5