Red Door Escape Room: Spoiler-Free Review

As of February 2024, my husband and I have officially finished all the escape rooms at Red Door Sacramento! This was the first venue we went to when starting our escape room quest, and needless to say, it got us hooked. Below is the comprehensive breakdown of our experience (sans spoilers!) so you can get a feel for what they have to offer. 

Red Door Escape Room - Sacramento 

Technically located in Rancho Cordova, this escape room is in the same building as the Old Spaghetti Factory right next to Highway 50. It's part of a franchise so they have other locations across the country, some with different episodes! For now, this review is just about the Sacramento location.

Rooms: Every single room was awesome. The settings were unique and well-tailored to the themes, and every room was technically a multi-room with multiple spaces to explore/escape. Listed in the order we visited...

• The Gift: 2–8 players, 8/10 difficulty (as rated by the venue)
• Break into an antique shop to steal a sword! Very fun, clever room. It was my husband's first escape room ever, and my first one back after a few years, so it took us a minute to get the hang of it, but filled with unique and intriguing puzzles that got us going in no time.
• Solved with 6 minutes to spare, 2 hints!
• Once Upon a Time: 2–8 players, 6/10 difficulty
• Fairy tale theme with Shrek-like vibes. Family-friendly, fun and not difficult. While it's more of a childlike setting, it was not overly easy and had plenty of different puzzles and styles to enjoy, including a riddle.
• Solved with 19 minutes to spare, 1 hint!
• Confinement: 2–8 players, 9/10 difficulty
• Spooky (but not too scary) room where you have to escape someone's nightmare....! I'm not into scary movies/haunted houses, etc. at all, but this one was well within my tolerance level with one (very smol) jump scare. Fantastic puzzles, some simple, some more difficult, and great setting.
• Solved with 6 minutes to spare, 2 hints!
• Prison Break: 2–8 players, 7/10 difficulty
• Escape prison! Fun, multi-room experience with cool puzzles. We accidentally skipped a puzzle because we managed to access one element before it was meant to be available, so when the final door opened I was a little confused, but otherwise GREAT game with some truly unique elements.
• Solved with 23 minutes to spare, 1 hint!
• Taken: 2–10 players, 9/10 difficulty
• Difficult but fun set of hotel rooms where you and your team start separated! We intended to do this one with a larger group because of the starting situation, but couldn't resist! While we did manage to make it out, having at least two people on either side will probably be to your advantage.
• Solved with 1.5 minutes to spare, 1 hint!
• Treehouse Takedown (45 minutes): 2–6 players, 7/10 difficulty
• Fun, little adventure where you build a Rube Goldberg machine. We almost didn't do this one because it was a mini episode and seemed like it might be meant for kids, but who are we kidding, we're completionists (and quite frankly, sometimes kids, as well). Wound up being super fun with lots of game-type elements.
• Solved with 5 minutes to spare, 0 hints!

Cost: $39.95/person ($33.95/person for the mini adventure), save 20% if you pay for your next adventure after your visit!

Gamemasters: Very helpful team, answered all our questions and even let us peek into other rooms to decide which ones we wanted to try. That said, they may have been too helpful because in one room they gave us a hint without us asking right as we were about to solve it!

Puzzles: Very fun and a mix of locks with keys and letter or numeric combinations, plus puzzles involving items, setting and other unmentionable fun. The puzzles themselves were good quality, fairly intuitive and everything (apart from the one thing we accidentally accessed early) worked as it should.

Timer: Every room except one is a 60-minute challenge with a TV screen in each setting showing exactly how much time you have left, how many hints you have left, and any messages from the staff. When you finish the room you run out and slam the big red button for a dance party and your final time. The treehouse is only 45 minutes and tracks your time with the progression of Christmas lights. 

Hints: I believe you start with three free hints in each room. You can get a bonus hint for solving the chalkboard puzzle/riddle in the lobby and for going on your birthday! If you use more than three hints, they add minutes to your complete time, but you still have the full hour to complete the quest. 

Leaderboard: This venue has a leaderboard recording the single top team/time for each room. I'm not sure how often they update it, but the times seemed hard to beat!

Lobby: Nice, open waiting area with teasers to their rooms, wooden puzzles to play with and swag for purchase. There's also a riddle of the week that will earn you a free hint if you solve it. Lockers are in the back near the entrances/exits to the rooms.

Photo Ops: We had fun posing with items from/representative of the rooms at the completion of our quests. They also had signs to hold, just make sure you hold them the right way (one of ours didn't say we escaped even though we did, lol). We were able to have our photo in each room, and at a backsplash in the lobby.

Overall Fun: 8 million mega points! Well worth the money and looking forward to exploring the other rooms at their other franchises if we're ever in the area while traveling.

TLDR: 5/5, would escape again

Looking for more escape room fun? Check out my full list of NorCal Escape Rooms with links!