Project Panic Escape Rooms - Dallas

Went in with a group of 9. Right off the bat was pretty shocked with the upkeep of the facility. The lobby was filthy. There were used tissues, dirt and food crumbs underneath the couch. It didn’t seem like this was from a previous day of party it absolutely seemed those floors had not had a broom on them in months. As you made your way to the restrooms the same theme was present as they utterly disgusting. You could see the dirt and grime buildup on the floor, toilet paper not even on the toilet paper holder and it appeared that it had probably been that way for a while. When you walk out you see junk stacked all over the back wall and as you make your way back up to the lobby the floors continue the trend of filth followed by random space heaters everywhere. It hasn’t been cold in over a month. They still have the Christmas tree up though so a keen eye to detail is clearly not present. Before we started a couple of us asked to buy a soda which the host said “oh yeah we don’t have any we’ve been out for over a month. I guess we should restock those.” Then we asked about water he once again laughed and said “yeah we don’t have those either”. Luckily there’s a Starbucks a couple doors down. Next came the escape room. We’ve done a handful of escape rooms and this one was a bit outdated and in poor condition. We did the “White House” and parts of the puzzle were falling apart or straight up broken. Finally as we thought we had solved the puzzle the host called time. He came in and told us we didn’t solve which in fact we did. He confirmed we had the right solve and we told him the device wasn’t working correctly. His reply “oh man not again. Someone must of messed with the wires, my soldering skills aren’t the best.” We took blame for maybe messing with the wires. But also how are you going to have a black box on the wall with a piece that detaches? He was very clear on the items that were not apart of the puzzle at the start of the game with no mention of this box. You’d think since other things in the room had blue painters tape that said do not touch on it this instrumental piece of the game would also. All in all for $360 this experience was disappointing and quite frankly janky.

Mar 31, 2025 · Olivia Sweeney

We are very experienced with escape rooms, let the host know that, and chose the hardest room. This place is the worst I've been to and will not be coming back. The rooms don't seem to have heating, there was a space heater inside but it didnt do much. The game was in poor condition and many things broken, the host had to come into the room and manually open a puzzle for us. Then, without us even asking he would give us clues and essentially answers upon opening a new puzzle. It was very frustrating to work clues that were falling apart or broken. It was like the host was trying to make sure we escaped and would provide more information than necessary to make that happen. Go to any other escape room and it will be better.

Feb 23, 2025 · Kaylee Jeffries

We have done several escape rooms prior to this and due to the high rating we booked here and chose Maffianos. When we walked in the facility was freezing cold. They did have space heaters all over the place but they did very little to help. It was warmer outside in the mid 40s. The lobby was also very messy. When we were started in our room it was very poorly maintained. The wall panels were coming off and the clues looked like some were broken or maybe didn’t belong. After about 10 minutes we found an unlocked door that should’ve been locked so we proceeded. The game master came in and said they messed up and didn’t reset the room properly. They let us change to a different room. Same thing in the other room. Very poorly maintained. There was paneling coming off the wall and holes in the wall. The game itself was ok in comparison to others we have done but definitely the worst overall. The staff was helpful and responded quickly when we asked for help. Overall we will definitely never be back to try the other rooms.

Feb 23, 2025 · Cori Peterson

I love escape rooms and this was no different. The room was great, it was two stories which was a first! However, the room was soo hot. They had a portable AC unit in the room but it was not helping. Walking into this place I was hoping to escape the 100+ degree Texas summer heat, but instead we walked right into it when our escape room was supposed to be stuck in a snowstorm in Alaska! Very off brand lol. Besides the heat, it was a good escape room, the instructor gave a bit too much information in the beginning during his speech in my opinion.

Sep 05, 2024 · Cheryl Shavonne

I really want to love Project Panic's escape rooms... But they're just way too sloppy in ways that ruin the experience. At a premium price ($40/person), that's not acceptable. I've done two escape rooms here. On the plus side, this is NOT a "dozens of locks and test every combo on every lock" escape room experience. Rather, there're clever tactical puzzles with all sorts of technology (e.g., RFC) and fun experiences (e.g., secret doors or compartments opening when you place objects in the correct locations and/or correctly solve large puzzles, like inputting the correct word on a giant word wheel). On the negative side, room maintenance is poor here, and they do an incredibly sloppy job of preparing rooms, leaving plenty of puzzles pre-solved for your group. This detracts from the experience no matter what, and has the potential to 100% ruin your escape room experience. I've done two rooms here. The first, "White House," was an impressive experience. It features a plethora of creative puzzles, only a tiny fraction of which involve combination locks. The majority of puzzles involve manipulating room elements, etc. However, the maintenance on this room is extremely poor. Several mechanical aspects of the room (e.g., automatic sliding doors, etc.) don't work, and the MC simply tells you to tell them when you've performed certain actions so that they can tell you how to manually open broken gimmicks (e.g., doors, compartments, etc.). In our playthrough of this room, several compartments that should have been locked were left open, and several puzzles were "pre-solved" (i.e., they didn't reset them from the previous play-through). This ruins some of the fun (as you don't have to solve those puzzles) but also creates substantial confusion (as you don't realize which room objects and clues pertain to the drawers, compartments, etc., that were accidentally left open). Finally, this lack of attention to detail is apparent in the core room design. The final puzzle of the "White House" contains incorrect instructions. The instructions are designed to confuse, but even when they are correctly parsed, they give incorrect information, leading to a fully "trial by error on a timer" final puzzle. The staff seemed to not even realize that their instructions for the final puzzle are wrong. The second room, "Art Gallery" was just a horrific experience. Important clues (including words projected on one wall) weren't turned on. This escape room requires you to solve puzzles in a initial room to unlock a compartment containing a key to the next room. On our playthrough, the compartment containing the key to the next room was just already open (which caused us to skip more than half of the escape room and deeply confused us as to which clues were relevant and which ones pertained to the attaining the key which we erroneously received first thing). Several other locked compartments (which should have required solving puzzles to open) were also just left open. Overall, the *vast majority* of the puzzles in "Art Gallery" either (1) weren't turned on, or (2) were pre-solved for our group. Although management did *try* to remedy the experience with "Art Gallery," they did so in the sloppiest way possible: Despite that several people individually paid $40 for the room, they simply gave a gift card (not refund, but gift card) to the person who booked the room. Unfortunately, that gift card isn't divisible among the people who paid for the room individually. Overall, Panic Escape Rooms has some cool ideas. But they're sloppy with maintenance (letting broken room components stay broken and "fixing" it by having the MC radio you to manually open compartments when you've solved puzzles), they're sloppy with room prep (leaving puzzles pre-solved on every room I've done with them), and they're sloppy with customer service (not refunding rooms that were in unacceptable condition, and instead giving a single gift card to the person who made the reservation, when multiple individuals paid individual fees for the messed-up room).

Mar 15, 2025 · Nate Hudson