I and my friends are no stranger to the thrilling experience of escape rooms, we did it together so many times. In my most recent experience, we booked an escape room at Omescape, at the Markham location.
[7501 Woodbine Ave, Unit 7, Markham, ON, L3R 2W1 - 905-695-9556 - https://www.omescape.ca/markham-games ]
The Markham location has 5 different rooms, each with different themes, but we decided to book the “Dark Altar.” I really liked the story as it revolves around stopping an archeology fanatic from completing a dark ritual at a creepy museum, which would somehow give him some sort of godly powers. It was probably inspired by some Hollywood junks. The room had a difficulty of 4/5 and had a very low success rate, which suits us well as we wanted to really challenge ourselves.
Before entering the room, an employee had shown us an instructional video to ensure our safety and protection of the room. Afterwards, we put on blacked-out sunglasses and were lead to the dark room. Once we were all in, the employee left and sealed the door, leaving us to attempt to the stop the ritual and escape the museum. The main reasons I found this particular room to be great was because of: consistency, technologies, and décor. Firstly, all the puzzles remained consistent with the theme of “dark rituals” throughout the room. Secondly, they had used different types of technologies and mechanisms which I haven’t seen before in any other escape room and was very impressed with. For example, we were trapped in a room with no door but had an altar, two coffins, and four skulls. Two team members had to step inside the coffins, which would trigger sensors for lasers to come out of the eyes of 2 skulls on one side of the room. Another set of team members had to use mirrors to redirect the laser beams into the eyes of skulls, which were facing the other side of the room. After successfully doing this, the altar would split into two and uncover a hidden passage behind. Lastly, I thought the escape room’s decorations were very immersive. All the props, decorations, and room schemes really made you feel like you were inside that creepy museum.
Another positive point about the particular location of Omescape we went to is that the main area contains a Yogen Fruz/Preso Tea and Board Game section. I thought it was great that we could grab a snack right after the escape, or failed escape, and hang out playing various board games for however long we wanted.
The only reason critiques I have about Omescape is the noise levels and service. When we were at the end of our escape, we could hear all of the noise in the main area. I felt it made it harder to think about the puzzle solution because the voices of other guests were distracting us. In addition, we felt the after-care service was quite poor. Once we were done the escape, we would be able to take a group picture of memories. However, the employees did not come to the picture area, even after multiple reminders.
