Peanuts In My Pocket

Over the weekend, we played Dr. Jorg’s Lab at Infinity Escape in downtown Fullerton. It was our first time playing with this vendor, so we didn’t know what to expect. Having played enough escape rooms, we know quality can vary greatly between vendors. The good news is that we had an immersive experience and escaped in record time. There was no bad news.

Our team consisted of my wife and me, plus my son and his wife. Together, we average about 20 successful escape rooms each, making us a well-coordinated team.

The room, also called Zombie Lab, is designed for as few as two players and can accommodate up to seven. Our team of four felt like the perfect fit. We weren’t quite tripping over each other, but there wasn’t much extra space. Seven players could work, but only if they were all five feet tall and weighed 100 pounds.

The cost was $148 to book the room for an exclusive four-person experience, or $37 per person. We also tipped the game master on our way out.

The website doesn’t list a difficulty level, but while waiting to play, we learned Zombie Lab was designed as a medium-difficulty room. Based on our experience, we’d rate it closer to the easy end of the scale. We finished with 23:31 left on the one-hour clock, which may be a record solve time for us.

Your Mission:

You are a C.I.A. operative dispatched to Cryotech Labs, a secret bio research facility located in Orange County. This facility has been taken over by Edward Grimm, a disgruntled lab assistant who intends to release the necro virus and a horde of infected flesh-eating zombies into the city.

As puzzle-based rooms go, we enjoyed the layout and flow of the experience. In our post-game review, we had a long list of things we liked and only a few minor areas for improvement. Overall, this room was a great experience. We rated it a solid A on our tier list. It’s a great choice for both new and intermediate escape room enthusiasts, and we think it would be a lot of fun to take kids through as well.

We liked that the room followed a traditional sequential puzzle-solving method, with additional clues developing as the game progressed. The increasing complexity over time added to the experience. We were also surprised to encounter at least two puzzles that were completely new to us, which made the game even more memorable.

For improvements, a few minor tweaks would round out an already solid room. The game master jumped in a few times to provide direction when the mechanics weren’t obvious. As we discussed it afterward, we realized that each of these interruptions briefly took us out of the immersive experience—and they weren’t necessary. We would have figured things out eventually.

I’ll close with a special mention of the outstanding sound effects. They were perfectly suited to the room’s theme and clearly well thought out. Well done!