The Tick took over at San Diego Comic-Con this year with a panel and expansive offsite (with multiple parts!). The results, though, were a bit mixed.

Those starting their adventure off with Amazon’s The Tick offsite in the MLK Promenade were first directed to enter a canopied room, where you picked up an RFID wristband. You then spent some time sitting on sofas (the best thing any SDCC offsite can have, and really the only truly important part of this review) and making use of their phone-charging stations while different clips played on TV.

While the sofas and charging stations were a great addition, the headphones they gave attendees to use to hear the clips were confusing – an employee had to come through and turn your headphones to the specific channel of the clip you were watching, so that you were in sync. The employees when we went through weren’t paying much attention, and there also didn’t seem to be enough of them. Simply setting the headphones up to where attendees could switch between the channels themselves would have been much smarter.

Also in this area began the first part of the “please stop asking me the same questions 100 times” survey. That’s a slight exaggeration – I believe we were only asked the same questions four or five times over the course of the offsite, but it was still entirely too many. I understand that Amazon wants to measure whether or not you are more likely to watch The Tick after learning more about it, but asking once at the start and once at the end would have served the same purpose and annoyed people far, far less.

Eventually, you moved on to the second section – where you could flip and move levers to have the giant Tick antennas represent different emotions. You were also asked, you guessed it, more survey questions! They also had someone with an iPad, and allowed you to choose the free merch item you wanted (t-shirt, tote, and more) which included a quote of your choice from the show.

Finally, you made it to the main attraction – the escape room. They loaded your group into what at first appeared to be a storefront, but eventually you had to figure out to push a button to unlock the real experience, where you ran around in two different rooms and find “clues” (marked by RFID scanners). The person who unlocked the most clues was the winner. We had fun running around the rooms and digging through the various set-ups, even if I’m still not entirely sure what it really had to do with The Tick.

After completing the challenge, you were led into a room where you discovered your scores, picked up your free swag item, and could pose for a green screen photo op. Oh, and there was also more survey questions. I bet you never would have guessed.

Overall, the experience was just okay. They gave you a decent amount of swag, and I will never complain about any offsite that has sofas – but the constant survey questions were annoying, and I’m still not entirely sure what most of what I experienced had to do with The Tick.

Still, it had more good than bad, and it was a nice break from the heat and the crowds.