Morning Never Comes – retired

The more “spooky” of the rooms, so it seems, of the selection at Smartypantz. You’re ghost hunters or something of the sort and are in a home that’s haunted, and you have to put the ghost to rest before the midnight or they kill you. Seems pretty straight forward. We’re treated to a very well decorated room, much like the previous room we’ve had done. Our host was again in character that was unique to the role they were playing. It’d be interesting to see if you did the same room again if it’d be the same host or if they play the same sort of character. Ours was playing a “Bill and Ted” sort of character. The puzzles were pretty neat, lots of variety and some hidden aspects as well. One particular puzzle was something that I had thought of initially as well as something to do for an escape room, but seems like they beat me to it! Despite everything, we had the same feeling as before, where we had to get a hint on the last puzzle and then it was over. It felt a little quick (again, like last time) and a little anticlimactic as we expected a little more afterwards still. I know it’s 45 mis in time, but I feel like it would’ve worked better if the puzzles were adjusted and added to to fit our 60 mins average in Calgary.

I’ve been hearing about SmartyPantz for a while with them being in both Vancouver and Edmonton and was excited to finally get to try them. Walking into this room, there was a definite “wow” factor right off the bat. I felt like I was almost walking onto a movie set that was decorated from floor to ceiling and it instantly transported me to a creepy library. We were also guided in by an actor who set the story up for us and became our guide we’d call through a walkie-talkie for hints while remaining in character. This is a system I have come to quite enjoy in rooms lately. Back to the room itself, right off the bat it was a huge seek and find game and there was TONS to look through. Just like in real life, there was a crazy amount of objects around that had nothing to do with puzzles but you had to sort through anyways. The puzzles themselves were relatively simple and there were about five in total which was the only downfall to this room. Even though we still managed to fill up most of the 45 minutes we still left feeling like we wanted more puzzles. It seems that SmartyPantz excels in the immersiveness of their rooms. I feel if they could brush up on their puzzles and add a bit more to the room this could easily be one of the top rooms we’ve done simply because of the work they’ve put into making their rooms look so believable.