Universal Orlando has added “Escape Rooms” to Universal CityWalk. However are the Back to the Future and Jurassic World themes enough to justify the cost? In my opinion, not really. However, it also depends on your expectations.
Universal Escape Rooms Review
Universal’s Great Movie Escape is located at Universal CityWalk and start at $49.99 for about an hour with up to 8 guests per room. There is some flex pricing like the price goes up after 6 p.m. and on the weekends.
My friends and I tried the Back to the Future: OUTATIME Room and paid $65 on a Saturday night, and it was not worth the price at all. In fact, we were all pretty frustrated with the experience, with one friend bailing in the middle of the experience.
There are 2 Universal Escape Room themes to choose from: Back to the Future and Jurassic World.
The Back to the Future: OUTATIME description states “Great Scott—Biff’s at it again! He’s stolen Doc Brown’s newest time travel device to sabotage the timeline for his gain. Follow Doc’s clues to find the prototype, track down Biff and save the day before you’re outatime. No escape room in the past, present or future has ever been like this.”
Jurassic World: Escape states “Find yourself in a secret genetics lab on Isla Nublar and use your wits to solve a serious problem: an apex predator has broken free and is headed your way. This escape room has more teeth (and claws) than anything you’ve experienced before.”
Where is Universal Great Movie Escape Located?
The Universal Great Movie Escape is located at Universal CityWalk close to the area by Antojitos.
Arrive about 15 minutes before your reservation time and check in with the front desk.
Then you’ll go to another room for a safety and rules video. That will be the last time to use the bathroom before you go into the experience. You can leave the escape room experience if you want before it ends, but you cannot return.
The description is right in that no escape room has ever been like this. If you’re expecting a traditional escape room experience for Universal Great Movie Escape Rooms, then don’t. The setup is quite different.
First, you’re not trying to “escape” out of a room. Traditionally you solve a series of clues to lead you out to your escape.
Here you earn points for each puzzle you solve within the 8 rooms. So you receive one point for each puzzle.
Before we went in to begin, the cast member told us the average number of points earned is between 5 and 6, and the highest she had ever seen was 11. So while it was like ohhh, I like a challenge, my friends and I didn’t understand why it would quite that difficult. After all, we were escape room pros.
Are Universal Escape Rooms Worth the Price?
As it stands, I don’t think the Escape Rooms at Universal are worth the price. $65 is too much for what we experienced.
The theming is cute and the decor of the rooms itself aren’t bad. However a couple of rooms were just memorabilia on the wall with buttons to push. The actual storyline of the experience isn’t particularly clever either.
When you enter the first room you are introduced to a guide named Nico. She basically guides you along the rooms and sometimes she’ll give hints. One of the frustrating things about each room is you have no idea how much time you have. Universal says that adds to the mystery.
However, you just have no idea what is leading to what, because if time runs out, then Nico comes back and says something miraculously happened to fix the problem and you get to move onto the next room.
Another issue with the rooms is that music or background noise is so loud, sometimes you can’t even hear what Nico is saying. We had no idea if we had solved a puzzle, what counted as a puzzle, or frankly, what we were even doing.
Now that could be user error or we just weren’t intelligent enough to figure out the puzzles. That’s very possible. But instead of us not figuring out different puzzles to move on, now we’ve seen each room, know what the end result is, therefore giving us no desire to ever come back to finish anything.
One friend got so frustrated, he made the signal to leave the experience, nobody ever came to get him, so he started opening doors and accidentally walked into another family’s experience.
When the rest of us finished, they told us we got 5 points. We could not even pinpoint what would have given us 5 points.
If you want a different type of experience and one of the themes interests you, then give it a try if it sounds up your alley. But there are so many different Orlando Escape Room experiences, it’s hard to recommend this one for the price point.
But, Butterbeer? Universal Orlando has a lock on that. Here are 6 different types of Butterbeer to try at Universal Studios.
