Puzzleworks MN - Just another day at the hospital
I have attempted one other escape room in the past, and this was with a large group of around 10 people. I found that I did not get as much out of the experience because you could not be involved with every step of the process, and things did not link together in your mind as well.
This time, I went with just one other person. I tried out the “Hospital” escape room, perfect for my pre-med self. Through its inaccuracies, which apparently an anesthesiologist had already pointed out on a prior attempt, I did enjoy the escape room. It was VERY well planned. The overarching goal of this escape room was to switch out a cooler with apparently a human heart inside with my doctor friends lunch box inside an operating room. This is where the first inaccuracy emerged, as a human heart would not be viable more than 6 hours, so who knows how much of that surgeons work day had passed before he noticed he left the heart at home. And so my friend and I brought the cooler to the hospital with the goal to change out the heart with the lunch box before anyone noticed.
First, before entering the room, we were read off the rules. Most of which were no vandalism, no standing on things, yadah yadah. Then, we got started. My handsome partner and I entered into an inventory room where which we had to organize in a specific way, and then perform some other puzzle like tasks in order to get into an elevator. This elevator was broken, so fuses needed to be connected in the right order to get us to our desired floor. Once in the operating room, we were faced with the most challenging puzzles of all. Unfortunately, this was where the disadvantage of only having two people emerged. We got stuck on a specific obstacle, and no hint was able to make us see the obvious. Time ran out. We failed our mission BUT our guide was kind enough to show us what we had missed and take us through the rest of the course. The rest of the operating room involved shocking the patient on the operating table back to life, and completing the transplant. We then exited on another level through the elevator to a nursery. I thought we had unknowingly moved to another floor, but apparently, our friend had just switched the walls around without us hearing in the room over. Even though we did not get to sign our names on the wall indicating we had completed the escape room, we got tokens for some beer at the brewery next door - Lake Monster Brewery, which was more than satisfactory for the pair of us.
Next door, I particularly enjoyed a Raspberry Berliner, which is a would recommend! Really well balanced sour beer. Go give it a try. They also have many a board game, and am proud to say I was announced the winner of monopoly;)
Five stars for a fun date night destination in the Twin cities.
