The Grand Wilshire Hotel

The Imaginarium (Scarborough, Toronto, Canada)

Time limit: 60 minutes

Age limit: Under 12 requires adult

Player limit: 3-10

Difficulty: 3/5

Awards: TERPECA Finalist (2019-2020), TERPECA Nominee (2021-2023, 2025), Best of Morty (2022-2023, 2025)

Date visited: July 2026

This one was a roller coaster of emotions.

I was originally very disappointed that we were going to have to leave out The Imaginarium from our itinerary because, initially, they were closed for relocation, and later, because time was simply too tight. I had heard good things about their rooms, especially The Grand Wilshire Hotel and The Steampunk Express, both TERPECA mainstays and highly rated on Morty.

But then, by finessing the schedule and successfully procuring some slightly modified time slots, I was able to squeeze the 2 games in after Daydream Adventures and before a later session of Revo Escape. However, the day before we were set to play, I received an ominous email informing me that the air-conditioning at The Imaginarium building had broken down and would not be fixed by the time of our visit. They had added temporary fans but warned that the air was not going to be cold.

With the Toronto summer heat already ramping up, we definitely considered bailing, but decided in the end that we were going to tough it out because this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Did we make the right choice?

To be perfectly honest, probably not. This was hands down our most brutal and unpleasant experience in an escape room — ever. Yet, it was completely of our own choosing and not the fault of the game itself. We initially thought it might be okay because there was a flash thunderstorm just before we arrived, and the air felt a little cooler. But once we were locked inside the stuffy escape room with no windows and just a fan blowing hot wind around, it was like we were trying to solve puzzles in a sauna. Despite the big bottles of refrigerated the owners gave us to drink inside the room — on the house — there was little relief to be found.

As hard as it is going to be objective, I'm still going to try and review this escape room on its merits. It wouldn't be fair otherwise. Now, with all that out of the way, what did I think of the room?

• The Grand Wilshire Hotel would be what I call a very solid room by today's standards. As an older room (it was already on TERPECA lists back in 2019), it was definitely ahead of its time, but it's now no longer a standout experience.

• The story has you and your team visiting the abandoned and haunted eponymous hotel, where you have an hour to free 3 trapped souls — or else you'll be joining them!

• The size of the room was pretty good, even though the first area takes up most of the space, so you're getting the most impressive stuff upfront.

• The same goes for the theming. It started off great in the lobby / bar area, filled with vintage suitcases, furniture, and creepy paintings on the walls, but the decor became more plain as the game progressed. Never bad, just less impressive.

• The puzzles were a mixed bag, with some very easy, instant-solve puzzles, and some highly complex ones. Many of them required careful observation or listening, as well as logical deduction and memorisation.

• As we had to go back and forth between the different spaces in the room, we did find the signposting somewhat problematic at times, as it was not always clear what we were supposed to do next.

• The ending was somewhat anticlimactic, but this was not uncommon for games back in 2019.

• We gathered from other reviews that this was an "easy" room, but we struggled so much from start to finish, barely making it out in the end. Coming into this game, we had finished all 12 games we played in Canada with at least 25% of time remaining (our average was 41% time remaining), yet we escaped this one with only 2 minutes to spare and even had to ask for not just our first hint on this trip, but 3!

• I'm assuming it was the heat that messed up our ability to think, as we did spend a lot of time wandering around aimlessly in front the fans and taking sips of water as we wiped away the sweat. Furthermore, we unfortunately encountered 3 pretty significant technical issues that ate up around 10 minutes of our time. Two of the issues required someone to come in to fix or bypass manually, while the other was for the most complex puzzle in the game and really confused us.

• When I look back on the game, I still don't feel it was easy, but I think without the above-mentioned problems, our escape time would have been more commensurate with the actual level of difficulty.

Escape time: 58 out of 60 minutes

Theming	Atmosphere	Puzzles	Creativity	Fun
B+	B+	B+	B+	B+

Verdict: While we had a nightmarish experience due to the broken air-conditioning and tech issues, The Grand Wilshire Hotel is still a very solid room in all respects and I imagine would've been quite fun in better circumstances!

OVERALL RANK:

H	E	Z	J
B+	B+	B+	B+