AmazingCo Mystery Weekend Review

You may have seen an AmazingCo Mystery Weekend popping up in your search for great gifts for travelers or romantic getaway ideas in your area. What is an AmazingCo Mystery Weekend, and is it worth buying? I answer these questions with my honest AmazingCo Mystery Weekend Review.

My Mystery Weekend experience was hosted by AmazingCo. As always, all opinions are my own!

AmazingCo Mystery Weekend Review

About AmazingCo

AmazingCo offers unique experiences for couples, families, and friends. These experiences range from mystery weekend getaways and mystery picnics to food walks and secret menu tasters.

They offer a variety of experiences in 50 cities across North America, Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom.

Mystery Weekend Review

An AmazingCo Mystery Weekend is a combination of their popular Mystery Picnic experience and a one-night stay in the area. Much of your trip is planned out for you with 8 mystery stops with your final picnic destination and your accommodation location a complete surprise. You only get to your next destination by solving clues on your phone.

Kevin and I did one of the Mystery Weekends in Dahlonega. This was a fun, romantic getaway in an area we hadn’t really explore before.

Starting Your Mystery Weekend

The day before your Mystery Weekend, AmazingCo will send you access to your clues. If you want to keep everything a surprise, you should only solve the first clue for your first stop before you head out.

If you need to plan for traffic or travel time, you should solve your first clue the day before. Otherwise, it keeps with the fun and mystery to save that first clue for the day of your adventure.

I was a little concerned because in my confirmation email the day before, there was no mention of the accommodation; it only really told you what to expect for the Mystery Picnic part of the experience. I wanted to make sure I was being sent clues for the correct experience and that the accommodation was revealed in a clue as well. I emailed the AmazingCo team and they promptly responded that yes, the accommodation is revealed at the end of the day after the picnic location.

They gave us a start time of 12 p.m. Since going through the clues and picking up items can take 2-3 hours, I feel like this is a bit of a late start. Be sure to eat a big breakfast before you leave!

You’ll collect your picnic basket and utensils at your first stop along with your first food item.

If you have any trouble figuring out the clues, don’t worry — there is a hint button and a final reveal button. I’d recommend always going through to the reveal to double check you got it right before heading on to your next stop. The answer page also gives you more information about your next location.

What to Bring on Your Mystery Wekend

Your confirmation email will tell you if there’s anything specific you need to bring on your Mystery Weekend. Here are a few ideas.

For the picnic itself, bring:

• Your smartphone
• A picnic blanket
• Extra water
• Comfortable walking shoes
• A pen and paper for solving clues

For the weekend, pack:

• Hiking clothes and shoes, since suggest nearby activities often include walking trails
• An umbrella or rain jacket, depending on the weather
• A phone charger or a battery pack since you’ll likely be taking lots of pictures!

The Food

With 4 different stops that included picking up food items at each, there was plenty of food for the two of us. We’ve done both a Mystery Weekend and a regular Mystery Picnic, and both times we had food left over to take home. Here’s some of the food we picked up on our Mystery Weekend:

• A meat and cheese plate with bread, olives, capers, and jams
• Chocolate truffles
• Salad
• Freshly baked muffins and sweet breads
• Two Cokes

The Activities

Throughout your adventure, AmazingCo will provide bonus stops in the area that you can explore. Some of our recommendations included a museum, local shops for everything from tea to art, and restaurants that were within walking distance as well as hiking trails that were within driving distance. Many of the experiences include a hiking trail option.

My only problem with this is that it isn’t immediately clear when you’ll need to drive to an additional location and when you can just walk. It also didn’t make sense to us to drive out to hike and then have to come right back to where we started for our next location.

So I tend to save these activities until after the picnic rather than add them as stops along the way. I would prefer, then, to have a list of all the recommended activities after the picnic portion so I didn’t have to keep clicking back through the clues to find an older suggestion.

After you’ve revealed your accommodation location, they have a button to click “in the morning” of your day 2. This takes you to rate the experience and then gives you a nice list of recommendations. I would have liked having this list sooner, since we’d already discovered a lot of it on our own the day before.

AmazingCo also provides some extra activities like conversation starters and a Would You Rather game. These were fun for passing the time and connecting with each other while we ate our picnic spread.

Add-ons

When you book your Mystery Weekend, you have the option of the regular all-inclusive weekend or a premium experience. The premium experience includes a premium accommodation and bonus picnic items.

You can also extend your stay with a second night of accommodation. This is available for the regular experience or the premium experience.

For the picnic, you can add on a bottle of red wine or a bottle of white wine.

I didn’t do any of the upgrades, so I can’t really speak to their quality.

The Picnic Location

The final picnic location is likely a popular park in the area, so you shouldn’t expect a secluded picnic experience.

In our confirmation email, it said that our picnic location would be 1.5 miles from the area we were exploring and advised driving. However, when we solved the clue, our picnic location was right by us. So it’s a bit of a toss-up if you’ll have to drive or not.

If you don’t like the location, can’t find parking, or it’s too crowded, you can always pick somewhere else that you might have noticed along the way. Since most of the experiences include hiking, you can probably head over to the recommended hiking spot and find a place to picnic.

The Accommodation

Our accommodation was a small boutique hotel within driving distance. It was a quiet and secluded place that only had a maximum occupancy of 28, so it was nice romantic retreat.

Our room was modern and stylish and came with a pillowtop Queen bed, free Wi-Fi, a smart TV, a mini-fridge, a microwave, a claw foot tub, and a stand-up shower.

I checked the price of the hotel online, and I felt like it was in a good range for what the Mystery Weekend experience costs. Yes, it would have been cheaper to book the accommodation yourself, but you’re paying for the Mystery Weekend experience as a whole and having someone plan your trip for you.

AmazingCo Mystery Weekend Review: Pros and Cons

Pros:

• You don’t have to plan a thing. Just solve the clues and head to your next stop! It’s a stress-free getaway.
• The self-guided nature of the experience means you get to take your time and spend the weekend how you want to.
• It’s a fun way to explore an area, whether you’re already familiar with the place or not.
• You get to try food and gourmet items from local shops and restaurants.
• You get plenty of food and fun and a unique accommodation you may not have picked out yourself. It’s a good value for a weekend experience.

Cons:

• Having everything planned out can be pretty restrictive. If you don’t like relinquishing control, this isn’t the experience for you. While you can specify any dietary restrictions or needs when you book, you still don’t have a say in what food you’re provided, so this certainly isn’t a tour for picky eaters. You won’t know a thing about your accommodation until the day of, so if you have specific hotel needs this isn’t the experience for you.
• It’s not always clear when you should walk or drive between locations. If you’re not as familiar with the area, this may complicate some things.
• It’s on the expensive side. You could book the accommodation yourself for cheaper, so you have to be okay with paying more for the mystery experience.

Review: Is an AmazingCo Mystery Weekend Worth It?

Overall, we really enjoyed our Mystery Weekend experience. It was fun to have our day planned out for the picnic, have the mystery of where we were staying, but still have plenty of time to explore on our own.

The clues were a medium difficulty, so we didn’t have much trouble solving most of them. If we got stuck, we had the handy hint and reveal buttons to help us out.

We had very few problems going into each store and picking up our items. Most people were ready and aware that we were coming for the Mystery Weekend and had our items ready for us; only one store was a little confused by it, and that seemed like it was a fairly new person who wasn’t familiar with the experience.

I think it was a good value for the money. It’s certainly a unique way to spend the day; I haven’t seen another experience like it. If you like surprises and like having a trip planned out for you, then you’ll love an AmazingCo Mystery Weekend!

Read next: The Best Travel Experience Gifts You Can Give

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Cheers!

Paige

Was this AmazingCo Mystery Weekend Review helpful? Have you done an AmazingCo Mystery Weekend? Let me know what you thought in the comments below!