Many facets need improvement:
1- Too much responsibility is placed on the guests to both sleuth AND mingle and not enough time to eat the courses. There is especially no time to go from the bar or restroom and arrive back in the conference room without missing something. A cash bar should be in the room where the dinner and acting takes place.
2- The wait staff did not speak English well. Plus, we had to ask for more dressing and bread and refills. There was not enough of the former to go around at a ten-person table, and they never came around unless they were waved down.
3- There should be more physical clues in the room and more scenes acted out. Insisting that each guest rely on a shared QR code in order to mine clues on their phones is time consuming - and the food is getting cold. Moreover, everyone should be given a clipboard since there is no room on the table to place or write on the single piece of paper that is the worksheet.
4- The code names are pointless and the actors think they are being creative by putting people on the spot to come up with a backstory for their code names when they are not employed actors; they are paying customers expecting to be entertained.
5- The basis of the crime is not explored at all (which revolves around the suspicious and untimely death of an actress) but we are supposed to forget about that and solve the most recent ancillary murder, which seems to ignore the overarching motive.
6 - In the end, one patron is awarded the prize for getting closer than anyone else to solving the (ancillary) murder. But the rest of the participants are not made aware of why that person won, what they uncovered, and what the rest of us may have missed. Thus, it is wholly anticlimactic.
The food, however, was very good. And it ought to be for 80 bucks a pop.
Thank you for your attention to this matter.