February 9, 2019 – There’s a lot to cover in this post. Not only was my visit to Escape Room Ensenada my 300th escape room, but it was also the first time I attempted an escape room in a non-English language. The rooms I completed in Singapore and Japan were English-friendly, so this was a completely new challenge for me.
I took a vacation on the Carnival Imagination cruise ship, and the ship’s one and only port was Ensenada. I was thrilled to learn that Ensenada had an escape room and reached out to Escape Room Ensenada to set up an appointment.
I contacted them in Spanish, told them I had a group of 3 wanting to play, but I was concerned because I only spoke a little Spanish. Their response was that as long as the rest of my group spoke Spanish, I’d be fine. Unfortunately, they misinterpreted my concern- in fact I was the only one in my group who spoke any Spanish at all.
Of course, this just got me more excited for the prospect of a unique challenge. I completed the signup and brushed up on a few escape room vocab words like “lock” and “password.”
A little background- though I anticipated a big challenge, my Spanish isn’t the worst. I’m not great conversationally since I haven’t done much speaking in the last decade, but I did take Spanish 4th through 12th grade in school and I worked in Puerto Rico regularly for a few years, where I’d occasionally sit in on meetings conducted entirely in Spanish and find my way through. So I felt pretty good about my chances, and was actually a little more concerned about my ability to have my team follow the rules and not misuse anything in the escape room.
We found the room in a theater business called Projection Salas and got set up pretty quickly. The place was easy to find, not more than a ten minute walk from the cruise ship, right on the main road in Ensenada. It was actually closer to the ship than a lot of the shops meant for tourists to visit.
The price for the room was unbeatable. We ended up booking with 4 (myself, Christina, and my two parents), and for an hour-long escape room, the price was 100 pesos per person, or $5.19 per person. At this price, I would have marathoned 10 rooms if Escape Room Ensenada had that many, but alas, there was only the one.
We jumped into the room and started solving puzzles. I was nervous at first because there were a lot of clues scattered around the room, in Spanish of course, so I was jumping from place to place to place to both keep things organized and to translate. We didn’t quite pick up on all the story elements the room had to offer due to our language barrier, but we were able to piece together the puzzles and keep moving forward. The game masters did a good job of nudging us along when we got stuck, too.
The room had a lot of neat surprises and thematic elements to keep us moving forward. The room was designed to highlight areas we needed to focus on (either that, or the game masters were easing us along), so we made steady progress toward our goal.
Near the end, the room threw a big surprise at us that was a real pleasure to solve. That challenge alone justifies the pricetag for the experience, and it put a nice finale on the escape room. Upon exiting, we were rewarded with bags of popcorn for our victory.
Escape Room Ensenada was a wonderful way to hit my #300 milestone. I’d definitely recommend it to any puzzle enthusiasts who speak even a little Spanish. As long as participants are respectful of the props and put discarded locks/keys in the requested place, chances are high the team will have a great time at an unbelievable price, and the experience is a great addition to a day in Ensenada.
Hi , we love to go try this room but for some reason we are not able to contact them, can you let us know how you were able to book ahead of time? We are going by cruise that day and only have a few hours near port so would love to lock in a time before we head over there. Thanks!