A High Tech Escape: A Review of The Bureau Escape Room Orlando
Over the past few years, escape rooms have become all the rage across the United States and Orlando is no different. We have a large variety of escape rooms to choose from on any given day. You can stop poisonous gases from being released, stop monsters from escaping or rescue fair maidens ala Zelda. In other words, you get to be a hero.
While the story behind your heroics may differ, many challenges that you will face are similar. Grab codes to unlock boxes or the door to another room, figure out clues that are left behind to solve puzzles and eventually “save the world” or at least someone. In all the escape rooms that I have done over the years, there has been little to no technology. Everything has been manual implements, pens, paper, locks, wooden puzzles, etc. This was not the case with the last escape room that I visited, The Bureau.
The Bureau Escape Room Orlando
The Bureau is a tech-enabled escape room that might be perfect for those that don’t like regular escape rooms. It relies more on common sense and noticing your environment than it does on solving obscure clues, as a typical escape room does.
The Bureau is located in a nondescript shopping center. When you pull up, you think you might be lost. The friend that I was meeting there actually called me because she thought she was lost. There is a B on the building and a very small sign that says The Bureau. (If you were working for the actual Bureau, they wouldn’t want a large sign announcing their presence would they?)
When you enter the building, you are placed in a holding room, where you are “briefed” on your responsibilities. You are then allowed into the inner portion of The Bureau. Please note that your appointment time is 15 minutes before the actual time you enter the escape room in order for the briefing to take place.
Our assignment (escape room) that day was to help an alien return to his home planet in a room aptly titled, UFO: Go for Launch. The alien had crash-landed on Earth and if he didn’t leave soon his family was going to attack Earth. There was a scientist researching the alien, but she had disappeared. Fortunately for us, she left behind clues that we could utilize to figure out how to send the alien back home.
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How does it work?
After completing our waivers, we were escorted back to our room. Rooms hold up to 10 people, but there must be a minimum of 2 people to play.
You have a game assistant that is assigned to your room to help with questions. In our case, the game assistant was part of the game as our missing scientist’s biggest fan. We were able to ask questions and she gave us one of the clues that we needed to open a door.
We opened electronic locks, created magnetic fields, talked to robots, went through a launch sequence and more inside the room. The kids, young and old, had a great time trying to solve everything. A small caveat, the youngest of all the kids ( 7 years old) was scared of the room in the beginning but got more comfortable as time went on.
What escape rooms are there at The Bureau?
Other rooms at The Bureau include Puppet Heist, where you must steal a relic with your trusty team of puppets at your side; Dr. Braingood: Undercover Sabotage, where you have to stop Dr. Braingood’s nefarious plan of destroying the Earth; and Lab at Loch Ness where all the Loch Ness monsters are being destroyed and you have to hatch a Loch Ness egg before that happens to prevent them from becoming extinct.
Something unique that The Bureau offers, that I have never seen anywhere else, is the option to play all the escape rooms in one day, or one night, with their After Dark or Morning Through The Multiverse programs.
What age is The Bureau good for?
Our group consisted of two adults, two teens and two elementary-aged kids. The room is definitely more suited for older kids and adults, but younger kids will be able to contribute more than they are able to in a traditional escape room.
Cost
All games, except UFO: Go for Launch are $37.99 per person. UFO: Go for Launch is $41.99 per person.
My group was guests of The Bureau in order to facilitate this review.
