Trapped Montreal

Most people visit escape rooms to test their intelligence, perception, and problem solving skills, all while having fun with friends and colleagues. At Trapped, the only thing that will be tested is your night vision. The only bright side (forgive the pun) is that a game at Trapped is cheaper than a visit to the optometrist.
Get ready to work in the dark, here. Trapped’s idea of a challenge is to take away your light, giving you tiny dollar store flashlights and lanterns along the way in order to make their lives easier in developing the games and yours more difficult in solving them. It is a cheap way for them to not have to work so hard to come up with smart, clever ways to hide evidence. Obviously, clues are harder to find if you have only a small flashlight with which to find them.
I left with a similar feeling to Jason’s before me.
The takeaway from my experience was a sad one: Trapped Montréal cares MUCH more about themselves than they do about their clients.
I have been to a few of these escape rooms. I love ‘em. And I have never been told to leave my phone in a locker or risk the game being over. They were extremely strict about their «NO PHONES OR ELECTRONIC DEVICES» policy to the point of saying that if I don’t agree, I can’t play. That’s a bit extreme. And as a parent, being out of communication would be irresponsible and unacceptable.
The acceptable conclusion was to put my phone in a sealed plastic case that gave me the ability to see caller ID but not take photos. Childish and immature, but that’s their line.
And telling new clients to like their facebook page and share one of their videos before even participating once, in exchange for a discount and «free membership» is akin to buying likes and testimonials. Positive feedback is worth nothing when it’s bought and paid for.
In the escape room, we were stuck (seemingly) for a good portion of our hour on a few details. We used our 2 hints, and at a certain point, everything started making sense after we got one detail. We escaped the room with 11 minutes to spare.
The staff came in and we recapped our experience and pieced together the exit. I found some of the challenges and puzzles to be well designed, but there was a lack of concise, clear story in the Death Note room. The fact that when we had the final piece of the game that we didn’t even know it was the last piece was anti-​climactic and unsatisfying.
In every other experience, just asking/​telling participants to not take photos was enough. It should be enough at Trapped too.
We kept comparing our Trapped experience to other similar locations, and although Trapped was middle-​of-​the-​road this time, I doubt we will be back because of their self-​important policies and poor approach to their clients.

My work’s social committee organized an event for team building and we were split into 3 teams into three different scenarios. I partook in the medieval dungeon scenario and without spoiling anything of note for you here, this is what I felt overall on what went right and what went wrong :
PROS :
— Staff were friendly and helpful, provided us with drinks.
— Awesome props. Won’t go into the details though.
— Initial part of the experience promoted teamwork and we worked together to escape, solid start.
— Ted plushie!
— Nice entrance.
— Tips were helpful (you get 2).
CONS :
— We came here in August and it was hot outside, the room we were stuck in for the better part of an hour was uncomfortable to the point it was unbearable. The back of my t-​shirt was drenched. Was it an intended effect to stress us out? If so, they should tone that down and provide their guests some moderate air circulation. We were all bothered by this and this is what stood out above and beyond everything in our mutual experiences. Fix this!!!
— Ambient sounds of screams are cool and all but they were loud and on an annoying to listen to during the hour. Along with the lack of air, I left with my head throbbing and I’m a parent. Thanks for that. Lower the music after 5 minutes, bring it back when 5 minutes are left. I don’t need to hear this more than this. Seriously.
— When we entered the last puzzle room, this is where everything for us went downhill. Beside these 2 points above, between the 5 of us we were provided with ONE SINGLE LIGHT and not the good kind neither! Those of us who came here wearing contact lenses suddenly felt woefully unprepared with the lack of light and the need to focus of our eyes on the smallest things (like combination locks) in poor ambient light. Informing your guests to wear glasses instead of contacts is preferable. To compensate for this, we brought items TO THE SINGLE LIGHT WE HAD and that was a huge error on our part as we lost track of them. Thanks whoever designed the lighting constraints but guess what, lighting was an issue! Perhaps you should improve this point and provide a puzzle to gain better lighting for the groups coming in. Kindly note, if you do unlock some puzzles, you do get more lights but I’ll be honest, these lights didn’t work all that well and the damage was already done. We wasted so much time backtracking. You may want to provide more lights initially and you may want to get the better kind as well. 1 light for 5 people isn’t good. Add another if you have more than 3 guests.
— There were too many of the same puzzle in this last room and it was boring. The entire last room was filled with rich intriguing items that served no real purpose. PLACEBOS! PLACEBOS EVERYWHERE! It was basically a key combination code fest. Very underwhelming!!! Some of the puzzles were pretty out there as well. Won’t go into detail though.
— Some of your locks are somewhat used. Hard to find the pin points. But hey, maybe it was the lighting issue. I was glad to be out of that room when we failed our escape.
Ultimately, the last room completely killed our momentum, our teamwork wasn’t a match with the constraints given… we basically borrowed each other’s light to investigate leads and feed ideas off of each other that simply didn’t work. Lights were given to key code men, who desperately needed it to work. It was somewhat frustrating and that’s not what we hoped for. Trapped Montréal promoted teamwork and teambuilding but I honestly didn’t get that experience due to the layout of the scenario that didn’t promote this all that well. If anything, any teambuilding was done was to vent out frustrations of this scenario. :)
I like the concept of escape games, I truly do and perhaps it was the scenario that may be the culprit but ultimately I think Trapped Montréal was a miss for me. There were several factors that came to play and overall, I’ll give the experience a 2.5÷5 stars, rounded down. I’ll have to try this Escape Game again, most likely elsewhere though.