Daring Damsels Escape Two Fairy Tales

Once upon a time, there was a pair of Daring Damsels that wanted to go on a date. One of their favorite things to do as a couple was to solve escape rooms. So they went to choose a room. “Where should we go?” The Bat asked the Dragon.

“Let’s go somewhere we haven’t gone in a while.” said the Dragon “Let’s go back to Once Upon an Escape!”

“What should we play?” Asked the Bat

“Arabian Nights!” said the Dragon.

And the date was set.

Ok, it may not have happened exactly like that. But it was close enough. Once Upon an Escape was one of our first rooms together; we played Neverland and loved it. But it has been years since we visited them. So the room was booked, and the game was on!

They changed the Lobby a bit since the last time we went there. It was even more beautifully decorated than last time. It’s a family-owned and operated room, so it makes sense that they would upgrade with time. I’m pretty sure their video was new, and it was incredibly cool, as the screen was inside a magic mirror.

I can also see why they chose to do fairy tales as an escape room. The female owner in the video looks like a princess right out of a fairy tale!

We chose Arabian Nights, as I said, but we ended up playing 2 rooms. We finished quickly and had extra time before our dinner reservation. And their generous repeat play discount didn’t hurt either. So after bursting triumphantly from the Arabian Nights room in 42 minutes, I instantly asked what rooms were open to play. We had already played Neverland and Rumplestiltskin, and Once Upon a Time has an hour-and-a-half run time. That room sounds fun, but we would be late for our dinner reservation. So 7 Dwarfs it was.

The host was amazing; we felt like her friends within minutes of meeting her. It did help that she was a Nightmare Before Christmas fan and I was wearing my Nightmare hoodie and Sally shoes. Instant connection!

She gave us a phone for hints, mounted in a beautiful frame to look like a handheld magic mirror. She asked if we wanted nudges, told us the room-specific rules that were not mentioned in the video, and opened the door. We stepped straight from a lobby into a desert!

And onto the review!! (I’m going to review both rooms at once, partly to further disguise any spoilers)

Props & Decor:

From the props in the lobby cabinets to those in the room, every bit of Once Upon an Escape was perfectly themed and crafted with care.

The sets in both rooms were entirely all-encompassing. I believe I mentioned that some of the puzzles are not traditional lock and combo puzzles. So they must be technology. Technology isn’t something you expect to see in the Arabian Desert or the 7 Dwarfs cabin. And for the majority of the parts, you won’t see it. With the exception of the hint phones and the black lights, all signs of tech are entirely hidden in the walls and the props. Doors open on their own, lights turn on and off and puzzles appear. But how they do it is a mystery.

I also liked the transitions between the rooms. Almost none of the doors were doors. We went through some cabinets, a fireplace, and other unexpected parts of the set. However, only the entrance and exit doors looked modern. In the 7 Dwarfs scene, everything is entirely dwarf-sized. The tables are shorter, the doors are smaller, etc. It keeps you inside the Dwarf’s cabin and out of the real world.

These rooms make good use of texture as well. The floors for the outside grassy scenes have actual fake grass on them. You crawl on it and it doesn’t feel like crawling on an inside floor. The Arabian Nights room has real sand! I won’t say in what context; spoilers. But be prepared to wash your hands afterward, because you will feel like you’ve been crawling across a desert. It really makes you feel like you’ve traveled when you leave an indoor building with sand under your nails.

Puzzles:

One thing I love about Once Upon an Escape is their puzzles. Some of them were puzzles we have seen before, some were brand new. It’s almost impossible to have a room with entirely new puzzles when we’ve played so many. But even when they’re common puzzle types, they present them in exciting new ways that fit in perfectly with the theme.

To begin, the goal of each room is unique. The Arabian Nights room instructed us to find a hidden lamp. While there was no promise of a genie, we were told that opening the door without the lamp doesn’t count as winning the game. When we were shown into 7 Dwarfs, we were instructed to find the heart of the sleeping Snow White. (I was hoping it would be an actual anatomical heart. I was disappointed.)

Without spoilers, there are still a few things I can tell you about the puzzles. None of them are stand-alone puzzles; all of them are integrated into the theme. A large amount of them are even integrated into the furnishings. The buttons are in the walls, and only activated by putting the appropriate pieces into the right places. There are puzzles that result in opening a lock with a code, but for a lot of those, the puzzles themselves are part of the walls or the floors. Some of them involve doing things you wouldn’t think of doing in an escape room. Others use ordinary objects in foreign ways, but ways that seem so obvious once they’re solved. Some may require a certain amount of trial and error, but they built in plenty of time for that. We ended up with one part completely upside down but had plenty of time to flip it and start again.

While both rooms have the customary black light puzzle, neither of them are solved solely by using the light to find things. The black light is instead used to reveal the puzzle to be solved. So once you think you’ve found the answers with the light, don’t turn the brain off yet. You may have to find another portion of the puzzle, then combine them, then solve.

The only complaint I have in this section is that one of the puzzles looks like it is firmly attached to the wall, and actually is meant to be removed. By common escape room rules, you will think you’re breaking part of the set. It isn’t marked “Do Not Remove” or anything. It just seems like part of the decor. We didn’t even know it could be taken off until we asked for a hint.

Theme:

The set of each room is based on a popular fairy tale, but they don’t ask the player to follow the story perfectly. It isn’t a Disney movie, nor is it a Brothers Grimm tale. They take the characters and setting and put their own ideas on them. You’re finding a lamp, but you don’t have Jafar demanding it or a monkey helping you. Snow White is already unconscious when you walk into the room, and the witch is barely mentioned. You are the main character of your story.

They had a framing tale, with Rumplestiltskin as the person in charge of your adventure. All of the somewhat out of game instructions were signed by him. This includes the Do Not Touch signs and all of the locks that were Red for Rumplestiltskin and not to be touched. So while we knew that, for example, the Dwarfs are not going to write “Do Not Touch” on the walls of their house, it at least seemed like a fairy tale character had done it. Kept us immersed in the fairy tale world to some degree the entire time.

Overall:

I love playing the rooms at this venue. They’re immersive, whimsical and fun. They are a bit on the easy side (or we are just getting really good at this), but still challenging. I want to go back and play the extra long one soon!