The Great Movie Escape Rooms at Universal's City Walk Orlando

In this week's episode, Jared reviews the Great Movie Escape Rooms at City Walk in Orlando.  

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On this week's episode of a Dryer Dose of Disney, Jared reviews the Great Movie Escape Rooms at Universal's City Walk in Orlando. Intro Music Welcome to this week's episode of a Dryer dose of Disney. I'm your host, Jared dryer. And today we are going to be talking to you about the newest escape rooms over at universal studios, Orlando. And we had a chance, my family and I earlier this year to go check those out and to do both escape rooms. And if you like escape rooms, they are a ton of fun. And we're going to talk to you about them today without any spoilers. So I promise you, we will not spoil them for you. If you like escape rooms, you're definitely going to want to tune into this episode. Episode as we go through and explain how these all work and the cool things that you get to do there. But first, before we do that we do want to ask wherever you're listening to this podcast, please click, pause, and find that subscribe button. 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So if you go to city, walk in the universal parks in Orlando, there is so much to do, and we are so excited about their new park. That's going to be opening in 2025. And we are definitely looking forward to that, but for the time being, you've got some awesome parks there right now. You've got three actually on site. So you've got the islands of adventure with the big roller coasters. You've got universal studios, Orlando with some of the fun dark rides. And then you've got volcano bay, which is a water park. In fact, we've never been to volcano bay. We don't really love water parks but that is onsite as well in an Orlando with the heat. Is always a welcome treat to go get cooled off over there. But you also have city walk with lots of restaurants, lots of shops. And now these new great movie escape rooms there as well. So lots of cool things and they've even got mini golf over there. So go check it out. It's definitely worth spending a day at city walk and observing all the cool things there. And trying them all out, but if you love escape rooms, you are going to want to do this now. If you've never done an escape room, let me give you a brief premise of what they are. So basically an escape room is you get locked into a room. Safely, meaning you can get out if you need to. But they lock you into this room with some kind of puzzle or story going on. So there's a lot of different ones around like Sherlock Holmes, trying to solve a mystery, or somebody's been murdered in, you're trying to find their will. It's hidden in a safe somewhere. So that way the family can get their money or you're trying to just solve. Some kind of puzzle that's going on. When you go into an escape room, usually you're going to get clues that include numbers or letters or ciphers, and they're going to usually lead you to locks and you can unlock locks. And as you make your way through the room, it's usually pretty linear. Sometimes it's a little more abstract, but you're going to be opening up different items throughout the room with those locks. And then they're going to have clues towards the next one. So it's like a little treasure hunt, and then as you go through it all you're sometimes moving into different rooms and then eventually you solve it and it unlocks the door or you find the will if the person who just died or whatever it is, and they're a lot of fun. So they're really good puzzles that are really good for teamwork. I've in fact, taken a lot of people from work. To go do escape rooms too. Do some team building. So that way we can share some ideas and share. Some experiences and talk about how everybody looks at things a little bit differently. But there are a lot of fun. We now have two official universal escape rooms over at city walk. And they are done very well and they put a ton of money into them. So if you've been doing escape rooms in the past where they're fun, they're cool, but they're just put together. No, that the ones that universal are very high tech, there's a lot of really cool things that are go with each one of them. Again, I'm not going to spoil them for you. But they are definitely worth doing. So they are a high-tech and at a level that you've not seen before. So trust me when I say that. The cost for the great movie escape rooms is usually about $40. Per person. Per room. So like I said, there are two rooms we've done both of them. But it's about $40 per person to go do it. Which when you compare that to other escape rooms out there, That's not bad. I've seen escape rooms anywhere from about 25 to $50 per person. And these at 40 are right in line with that. They are towards the higher end, but it's worth it. And the reason I say it's worth it is they are definitely done a little bit better with a lot more fancier tools and cool things that happen through there. So let's talk about first though, the lobby. So when you go to the great movie escape room. You're going to go in there. They've definitely geared this towards classic Hollywood. With a lot of old classic. Designed to motifs throughout this lobby. They've got a couple of bars in there. But when you go in there, they've got props from different movies. They got merchandise for the great movie escapes. Now it is all geared towards the escape room. It's not geared towards the parks as much but they do include the theming of the two escape rooms, which if you don't know, are back to the future and Jurassic world. Which is why I'm wearing my Jurassic park clever girl shirt today. Is in honor of that. But they do have merchandise. They do have, like I said, multiple bars through there. There's one upstairs. There's one downstairs and the bars have drinks that are associated with. These movies. So they do have a gigawatt drink for back to the future. They do have an Isla Nublar, a drink for Jurassic park as well. So the drinks are really good. There are a lot of fun. Do know that there's not a lot of food. There is a little bit of a snack items in there if you wanted them. But if you're really looking for food, I'm gonna encourage you grab a meal at city walk before you come in or plan a meal after you're done know that it is going to take about an hour or so to get through the escape room. So you can. Plan that aside and go get your food elsewhere before or after. But they do have these large movie screens in the lobby with trivia going on them. Showing classic Hollywood and some old stuff, which is a lot of fun. And they do tell you to arrive early. So when you arrive early, you're going to get checked in. They're going to take you through a video tutorial. Of how the rooms work and what to do, meaning. You don't need to punch a hole in the wall. You don't need to lift up the ceiling panels to get out of there. They're going to walk you through how it all works and explain it to you. They do have lockers onsite. So if that's ever a question or concern, Hey, I've got some merchandise from the parks or something, and I want to. Be sure that I don't just leave it sitting out. They do have lockers. You can use there for a small fee. So those are available on site. But it's a really cool atmosphere when you go in there. And of course it's staffed with cast members that are very into the movies and they're very engaging. Do know that when we went in, it was a little bit chilly now in Orlando, that's typical. Just because the heat during the days they do crank the AC inside. And this was no exception. And we were the first guests there in the morning. And because of that it had just opened and it was awful cool in there, but they've not had a lot of bodies in and out of there. The doors haven't been opened and shut. But do know that it was a little bit chilly. When we went. We did start with the back to the future room. So I'm going to talk about that one a little bit. But basically it's. It's tied into all the movies, all the back to the future movies. And again, I'm not going to give you any spoilers on the rooms themselves and how to work. The escape and how to get through them. But there are multiple rooms and they do tell you that before you go in. So if you've been to an escape room, sometimes they have a secret room all of a sudden, a door pops open and you go into another room. This one, they do explain you're going through multiple rooms. Because you're going to be solving multiple puzzles. To help out with the back to the future team over there. It's not a secret that you're going to be going through multiple rooms. Each room is its own escape type items. So you're going to have a puzzle or two to solve in each room. I will say that they are more difficult than what we've seen in some of the other escape rooms we've done throughout the U S we've done a ton here in Denver. We've done some in new Orleans. We've done some in Orlando, we've done some in almost every city that we've been to. I will say that these games that you're doing are just a little bit at a higher level. They're a little bit more complex. It took a little bit more thought to get through some of them, but they were pretty straightforward. In the sense of it. You were able to figure out what you needed to do pretty quickly. It just was doing it accomplishing. It was a little bit more difficult. This one took us a little bit more time than the other one. It took us about 45 to 50 minutes. To get through. But we did get through the escape room and we did solve everything. We did finish it. So it was a lot of fun. Like I said, they do cover all the movies. It's very linear in the sense of you were never going to go back to another room or you never need something from a prior room going forward now. I will say in back to the future. Again, this is not a spoiler. You are carrying a device with you that you need to plug in. That's the thing that you need to do along the way so that you will take with you. But aside from that, you don't need any codes from the last room or any ciphers from before each room is totally unique and you are going to make a solve in that room for that room. And then when you go into the new room, it's a new experience. The rooms are a lot of fun. It, was very engaging. But you definitely need people that can solve puzzles going through here because you need to be very observant. You need to be looking for different things as you go through there. I like an escape room. They will give you tips or tricks if you need it. Or hints to get through them. But we only, I think needed one hint in one room. So we had a lot of fun with it. It was a great time. I definitely encourage you to do the back to the future room. Second we, after that, we went and grabbed lunch over at the chocolate Emporium, and then we came back. And I did the Jurassic park. Room after lunch. And that one was a lot of fun as well. The Jurassic park room format is similar to back to the future that you have multiple rooms and they explain all that each room is its own set of puzzles. So you don't need to take anything along with you as you go through there's. The interactions in the Jurassic park rooms are more high tech. Meaning there's more tablets, there's more devices you're interacting with and what you had in back to the future. I will also say that the puzzles. We're a little more straightforward in the Jurassic park one or the Jurassic world rooms. Then they were in back to the future, meaning they were easier to solve. Once you figured out how to do it, it was easy to do. In the back to the future rooms, you knew what you needed to do, but sometimes it was difficult to do because you didn't know where to do it or how to do it. In the Jurassic world ones, it's very straightforward. So it's a much, much easier escape room. We did get through this one a lot quicker. We were at about 35 minutes to get through that one. And I will say when we came out, my family, even myself, we unanimously said the Jurassic world one was a better escape room, but it was also easier. And I think. That's part of the reason that the family liked it more. I liked it more just because it was more tech driven. It was more high-tech it was more interactive than the back to the future rooms. But I will say if you're looking for nostalgia back to the future had much more nostalgia than the Jurassic world one did. It was a lot of fun. They were a great event. I would highly encourage you if you like escape rooms, do them both. I know that's a little bit more expensive to do them both, but it's totally worth it. There are a lot of fun. And we are very hopeful in the future that they continue to expand this. And grow their escape rooms and build on it and do some more. I would love to see some other movies, whether it's E T jaws. I love jaws. If you guys don't know that I would love to see that. Maybe they do something with fast and the furious or Men in black, or even Harry Potter would be awesome. I think it would be really complex. And I think that it could be a challenge because they'd probably want to do spells and wands and, I don't know that everyone would know how to do that or make it work. But it would be a lot of fun to see that, expand this and do more. So I, again, like I would said, if you like escape rooms and you like solving puzzles, Then you definitely want to check out the universal great movie escape games over there at CityWalk at universal Orlando and do them. There are a lot of fun. With that we hope you have a great week as you're planning your next vacation. And we've got some other great episodes coming up. So you're definitely going to want to subscribe and tune into those in the future. And we'll talk to you guys next time. Bye. Bye. Playing Music