Escape Monthly Review & Coupon Code – April 2014
Escape Monthly is a monthly vacation-in-a-box subscription. Each box comes with food, beauty items, and other souvenirs from a new destination. You also get a tourist book – so this box might help you plan your next actual vacation too!
This month’s destination – Mexico!
The Subscription Box: Escape Monthly
The Cost: $49.95 a month ($39.95 a month with coupon)
The Products: Each box is a destination-inspired monthly delivery of luxury products to help you relax, renew and escape.
Ships to: US only
Bonus Points: Each month, one lucky member will be selected at random to win a vacation to the current month’s theme destination. Escape Monthly will pay for the winner’s airfare from a major US hub and two nights of accommodations, up to $1000. (They announce the winners publicly on Facebook).
Check out all of my Escape Monthly reviews and the complete Vacation Subscription Box List!
Each box comes with a fold out card detailing each item included in your box.
Ixtapa & Zihuatanejo Travel Guide – Value $17.99
Unfortunately for me this travel guide is the highest value item in the box this month. (I enjoy flipping through these guides, but personally I would prefer if the value of the book went to other items instead).
Sangria Senorial Soda – Value $2
Mundet Green Apple Soda – Value $2
I avoid artificial dyes in food and drinks, so I didn’t get to sample these, but they’ll go in the fridge!
Pacifica Mexican Cocoa Candle – Value $6
Fusion Gourmet Habanero Heat Sea Salt – Value $14.99
Normally my husband and I don’t have the same taste when it comes to candle scents – but we both love this Mexican Cocoa scent! (And I didn’t know Pacifica made candles!)
Kopali Fruit Organic Mango – Value $4.79
Ayate Fiber Exfoliation Cloth – Value $7.99
I’m pretty addicted to my Clarisonic, but if you’ve tried this exfoliation cloth and recommend it, let me know!
Bonus Mexican Candy – Value $4
Verdict: I paid $40 for this box and received about $60 worth of items. For me this wasn’t my favorite Escape Monthly box – I wish there had been a few more high value items besides the book and the salt.
What did you think of the Mexico Escape Monthly box? And what do you think of the May destination – California?
Written by Liz Cadman
Escape Monthly is on Livingsocial and you can get an extra 15% off using 15MAY from your livingsocial app. This is for 1 month or 3 month. For those who want to try it.
Big waste of money. They said the salt was a 14.99 value and then I receive an offer from them to buy products from the box and you can buy it from them for $5.00 for a bigger bottle. The salt and the candle aren’t even from Mexico. You put a lot of faith in a company when you are essentially giving them money site unseen, in this case they failed miserably.
I think next month’s California box will make it or break it for me.
Does anyone have the email required to cancel? I’m ready to move on to other boxes out there.
Beware, it’s a major hassle to cancel this subscription. I didn’t think it was a good enough value, so I cancelled before the ship date for my second box. They confirmed the cancellation, but nonetheless, I received another box. Come to find that they had billed my credit card for the second box before I had even received the first box. They told me that I would have had to submit a “refund request” when I cancelled my subscription to avoid receiving more boxes, and there is nothing they can do. Very dissatisfied – and it adds to my dissatisfaction that this box wasn’t a very good value either. Really disappointing that they’d treat customers this way.
I have always found Rebecca at Escape monthly to be very helpful. I had an item a few months ago that was defective. I emailed and she told me they would send a replacement. A few days later she emailed that they did not have any more and issued me a $10 credit which was fine with me given the value of the item was a little less than that. So my dealings with customer service have been good.
I cancelled my subscription after the Ireland box. For that price, the only things I have left are the guide book and the cream (which I don’t like the scent of, even though it works very well). I originally signed up for the NY box and forgot to cancel before I got billed for Ireland, but was OK with that because Ireland is one of my places I must visit. Overall, the guide books are OK and some food is nice but I’d like something more substantial, even a kew chain or postcard would have been cute. This is why I cancelled, I expected more.
I agree. This was my first and I think my last box. As much as I love Pacifica, it is NOT Mexican and the soda and candies were just cheesy items I can pick up at any Hispanic supermarket – not really an ‘escape’ to Mexico in my opinion. Meh.
This is my final box. I actually was pretty happy with the contents but the candle is not Mexican, IMO, and the salt says right on the front that it was made in Washington…I’m not impressed. I’m in California so I don’t want to receive anything from where I live. I think it REALLY sucks that you can’t cancel your subscription on their site. I think it’s shady to make it difficult to cancel.
The BeachMint subscriptions (JewelMint etc) also require a separate email that I had to track down to cancel. No way to do it through the site :(. Luckily they were really responsive, but I feel like they should all make it as easy to unsubscribe as it was to subscribe. The days of BMG and Columbia House are long over!!
I got kicked out of Columbia House. Maybe my strategy would work here?
I kept forgetting to decline the featured selections. They’d come in the mail and I’d write “refused: return to sender” on the boxes and drop them back in the mail. I did that enough times that I guess they got tired of it. They sent me a not-very-nice form letter and that was the end of that.
Granted, that was in the days when you had to pay for these things with checks so nothing had come out of pocket.
My husband and I loved the sodas with our Thai take-out that night. I will look for them in the grocery aisle. I don’t like anything with hot peppers, but hubby and son really like the habanero sea salt on their eggs. It will get used up and I will have to purchase more. Not a fan of the candy, but the son will take it. The wash cloth is great with shower gel. I love it.
That de la Rosa peanut thing is probably my favorite candy of all time. Still though, the soda and candy are valued way higher than they should be.
Oops, forgot to add something. Here’s some useless trivia. Did anyone notice that the travel book contained the city/town of Zihuatanejo? That’s where Red (Morgan Freeman) met up with Andy (Tim Robbins) at the end of “The Shawshank Redemption”. I love that movie (and book)!
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I am getting discouraged that the most recent boxes contain consumable items – mainly food. I do love the Ayate washcloth and I also use Clarisonic my face, but this cloth is for the body (much too rough for your face). The cloth scrunches up when wet, but it easy to smooth out and you put your gel in it and exfoliate! I love it! Smooth it out to dry. There were a lot of sugary items in this box and I am trying to limit that. I cut up the mango and use it in my morning oatmeal and it’s great. The candle is nice, but that too will get used up and all I will have left of my box of Mexico is a book that I will swap. I wish they would have one item (charm, keyring, bracelet, knick-knack…) that we could keep to remember our “escape.”
I was thinking the same thing. Being it was Mexico I expected some little trinket or keychain from Mexico like you would find cheap at one of their many markets. That would have been a nice little addition and given some real flavor for Mexico to the box that was otherwise pretty drub. Hope they see these comments and take them as helpful suggestions.
This was my first box, and like almost everyone who has commented, it was a disappointment. I think that within every major city in the U.S. there is a market of some kind that carries every single thing in this box! I was at Kroger yesterday and they had the exact same green soda on the “Hispanic” aisle. But, every box deserves a second chance! So, the next one is definitely on “make it or break it” subscription status.
I was disappointed with the box. I hope they decide to stop sending the guidebooks. I did like the agave cloth, salt and candle. I’m giving them one more month.
I am pretty disappointed in this box too. I’m going to swap most everything. I did try the Sangria but, I don’t like wine and that’s what it tasted like. Also, you can find these in the Mexican food section at most groceries. I was going to cancel but I’ll wait to see next box and decide after.
I agree the value isn’t very impressive, but I am actually more intrigued by the contents of this box than I thought I would be. It is a little odd that the include a travel guide to a very specific place, especially when travel guides become outdated somewhat quickly. California is intriguing, but not for the travel aspect only because it will probably have great products!
I hate to say, but I cancelled my sub after this box. So many of the items they send are foods that we can’t eat (or have in the house) due to anaphylactic allergies. And this one was not lux enough to keep it going.
But, I had to add that I LOVE the agave cloth! It is the BEST hand scrubber out there for getting makeup/gunk off your hands. I keep it next to the bathroom sink and find I use it all the time. It’s too rough for my face, but it’s perfect for my hands. Just wanted to throw that in so people had another use for them. I plan to buy a few more, too. 🙂
I saw a lot of people complaining about this box on their facebook page, but I enjoyed it. The soda and candy weren’t touristy items, but stuff that locals might eat and drink, and I don’t need more bath and body products anyway… I also liked the candle, mango, and salt. The books tend not to be my favorite anyway…
SPOILER: They are advertising that the May box is going to be their highest value box yet and one item will be Juice Beauty’s Green Apple Age Defy Hand Cream.
I was a little disappointed too. This is usually one of my favorite boxes. I’m not a fan of the bottle drinks and the book only focused on a small part of Mexico. I usually find a use for everything I get but this month I’m not crazy about many of the items. I do like the candle but I’m so so on everything else. Hoping California in May will be better.
It’s a really cool idea but I wouldn’t be happy if I’d spent $40 on that box. The only thing I like in it is the Pacifica candle. And possibly the mango snack. It’s obviously about the curation, not the total value. But didn’t it say “luxury items”? Lol