It’s not exaggeration when I say that I’ve been waiting a year to check out The Bunker Experience. I first came cross them at ScareLA in 2015, and loved their aesthetic. Though they weren’t open yet, I made sure to email Bea, the creator, to let her know we were interested in checking it out for the site. Thus began a year of back and forth; between missed meetings and a few months when they closed for a little while (but we’ll get the scoop on that early next week, when we run an interview with Bea, the mastermind behind it).

However, finally, this past weekend, I got to check it out.

And let me tell you…it was worth the wait.

The Bunker Experience is just that…an experience. It begins the moment you walk down the stairs, quite literally into a basement, where the theming starts right off the bat. The moment one of the “survivors” opens the doors to let you in, they are in character. This is not merely an escape room…this is survival for them, and they need your help.

You file in, sign your waivers (the only fourth wall breaking that will happen), and begin to get briefed on the mission. However, as soon as they begin talking about the map you need to find, something happens. I won’t say what, but I WILL say that this was one of the best beginnings to any escape room I have ever seen.

Everyone is quickly ushered into the bunker itself, where you have 40 minutes to find the map and escape to the UHC to get away from the vandals trying to break in. My team of nine immediately got to work, and began putting all the pieces together very quickly.

While the puzzles were not terribly hard, there was enough of them to keep people busy. We split off into groups instantaneously, with each one tackling their own puzzles they came across. Closer to the end, we did all crowd around the final two puzzles, since we had nailed all the rest.

One of the greatest strengths about the entire thing was the location itself; it lent itself naturally to the storyline, and The Bunker’s team wisely exploited that. They made use of every nook and cranny of the space. There was even an old bank vault in there, used during the 1800s, which they incorporated into the game seamlessly.

As mentioned earlier, this entire thing played out more like an experience, with an injured character in the room with us for most of the game, and the vandals banging on the metal doors, trying to get in, distracting us. It was pretty fantastic. All of these things kept us in the moment, and brought us deeper into the story, making for a wonderful experience. The only complaint I would have is the lack of a countdown clock within the room itself. There was a screen that showed an “outside view” of the bunker, and would have been perfect for a clock. That said, the character in the bunker with us DID call out how much time was left every so often, keeping the ticking clock in-world and in-theme.

We set the record, at 24:43!

The end of the game, after finding the map and making our way out, also contained one final surprise. I won’t spoil what it is here, but fans of Halloween Haunt season will certainly love the final moments of the game.

Overall, The Bunker Experience was fantastic fun, and a great twist on traditional escape rooms. Bea and her team did a wonderful job of immersing us into the story, and making us actually feel like we were part of this post-apocalyptic environment.

Best of all, my team set the record for the game, making it out faster than any other team had before. Not bad for a game with a 20% success rate!

Seriously, though, The Bunker Experience is a ton of fun, and we highly recommend it.

You can learn more about them at www.thebunkerexperience.com