Just for the LOL’s

99% of escape room establishments will have a way to monitor you during your escape experience. This helps the staff provide you with clues and, when necessary, reprimand you for breaking the rules (e.g, tearing things off walls, breaking into locked areas, short circuiting devices, etc.). I’ve always imagined how cool it would be to work at an escape room so I could watch people via closed circuit TV cameras. This would be 100% academic of course… there’s absolutely NO way I’d be laughing at people try dumb things and asking each other asinine questions…

Okay, I confess… that’s exactly what I’d be doing!

But I mean, c’mon! Wouldn’t that be hilarious!?

I think this is exactly what the makers of this room had in mind. I think some truly villainous characters went into a smoke filled back room somewhere and said to each other, “Hey, what kind of room can we make where people just make complete buffoons of themselves and we’d all have a good laugh watching it unfold on camera?”

The Good

Major credit due to this room for trying something new. And rest assured, there are no spoilers ahead as this info is displayed on the website.

Here’s the story: There’s a mysterious comedy club in the neighborhood with a wacky problem. Everyone who goes into the club is infected with non-stop laughter and DIES!*

*(The ‘dies’ part added by yours truly)

What sets this room apart from so many others is that your team will have to split into two separate groups. Each half of your team will enter separate areas of the room and you won’t have access to each other (for the time being). Club LOL is one of only two rooms that we’ve done that employed such a dynamic.

Your team will have to work in some unique ways in order to progress through the room. Again, no specific spoilers, but expect to be limited in a lot of ways. You may only have 1/2 of a puzzle, or 1/2 of the information needed to solve a puzzle. Stuff like that.

The Not So Good

I am 57,583% sure the only reason this room exists is for the proprietors to laugh at you on camera whilst you attempt to escape. I think Club LOL is a more fitting title for what goes on in the video room rather than the escape room itself.

The puzzles…. oh, boy.

Again, I’ve got to give credit where credit is due. Some of the puzzles in this room were a first for the Junkies (and as I’ve mentioned in other reviews, it’s pretty rare for us to encounter something we’ve never seen before). I’ve never run into a puzzle that tests your physical exertion and endurance levels. Think about marathon levels of swift repetitive motion…

I can think of no other reason a sane human being would make another human being engage in this sort of behavior other than to sip from the comedic nectar that is people making asses of themselves.

The icing on the cake must have been the exhausted look on my face which desperately asked, “Am I even doing this right?”

(I can confirm we actually used a clue on this issue. It says something when your team collectively says, “This can’t be the way this works…“)

And to be 100% honest with you, the above experience was my only meaningful take-away from this room.

Closing

Ever since doing this room I’ve always felt a nagging tightness in my chest while browsing YouTube and Reddit and I get the butterflies whenever a friend sends me a video link.

Why, you ask?

Because I have a lingering fear of the the room’s video footage hitting the worldwide inter webs. It hasn’t happened yet. It may not happen at all.

But the footage is out there…

And if anyone has indeed seen it, I’m sure they had a good LOL. 2/5

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