You huddle outside of the Earth Gallery with your team. You only have one shot at this. Get in, get the gem, and get out. The team from last night got skittish and left without finishing the job. It’s up to you to finish what they started, but be quick. You only have one hour to get the job done.
This is the premise behind The Heist, one of Escape Manor’s “Escape the Museum” after -hours experiences. Your team enters the Canadian Museum of Nature’s Earth Gallery with two other teams. Once inside, you join one of the three specialist groups. I was a part of the geologist team. From there, you use the tools left behind to solve five puzzles. Each puzzle put together will allow you to solve the final puzzle to get access to the gem.
I had never experienced an escape room before this one, so I cannot compare this museum event to the normal puzzles you would find at Escape Manor.
When you first enter the Earth Gallery it can be a little overwhelming, and this is probably because it takes place in a museum. All the clues are incorporated into the exhibits, which can be a bit of an information overload when you know the clock is ticking. My one piece of advice to anyone going into Earth Gallery is try not to overthink the puzzles. All you need are the tools you are given and a little bit of logic.
In terms of the set-up, I thought the heist premise was good, but it could have been executed better. For one, every puzzle tells your team to split up to find the clues, but you are not given the tools to be able to split up. For my team, we got one map, one dry-erase marker, and one sheet to write the clue answers on. For some of the puzzles you needed to follow the map to find the clues, which is impossible to do apart when you only have the one map.
The puzzles themselves were not too difficult once you got a handle on what you needed to do to solve them. As I said before, the hard part is trying not to overthink them. I think most people would be able to solve them as long as they apply logic. You do not need a science background or knowledge about minerals or gems to complete the puzzles—the answers are there for you to find so long as you know where to look. All the puzzles are well thought out and are a great mental exercise, but make sure you follow the map to your puzzles. There were several moments when my team and the other teams had to be directed away from a puzzle that was not meant for our group.
One of the biggest problems I found wasn’t trying to solve the puzzles themselves, but getting a chance to solve the puzzles. Escape Manor recommends up to 15 people per session, five to a team—I had four people (including myself), and found it impossible at some points to get a chance at solving the puzzles. I would recommend before you head to any Escape Manor experience to make sure you know who you work well with.
My biggest critique about the experience is the final puzzle. Once you solve all your five puzzles, you then find out that you have to work together with the other two teams to solve one more puzzle. My team discovered this four minutes before the hour was up, and we were the first ones to complete our five puzzles. The other two teams did not finish in time, and as a result we all failed the escape room. I think if you are signing on to do an escape, you should not have to be dependent on other teams in order to finish.
Escape Manor is a great chance to test your deductive powers and the “Escape the Museum” event is definitely a unique experience, but I found the heist scenario to be underwhelming.
