Escape Rooms
15I went to my first Escape Room recently. Went with three friends from work. One of them had been to escape rooms before, but the rest were newbies.
We were scientists on a spaceship and one of our containment units for a specimen failed. We had to fix the containment and get it stowed away within the hour, otherwise it was going to metamorphicize, and we were going to fucking die.
I. Am. Addicted.
I can’t wait for our next one. Afterwards we stood outside for 30+ minutes just discussing the puzzles. Then we talked about it the next day at work some more. The room was awesome. The amount of details that went into the room were insane. Looking online at reviews, it appears we went to one of the best rooms around and I might of been spoiled. It had some elements ripped straight from Alien and that’s probably why I enjoyed it so much.
The place we went to has two other rooms currently, and two more coming next month. At $35 a person, they aren’t super cheap for the amount of time you spend (one hour or less) but we have already decided we are going to all the other ones. There’s a place closer to us at $25 a person… But they normally let other people join your group. It says during Covid you can request private rooms. That should be a given. The place I went was automatically private when I booked it.
I also wonder about larger groups. Our room could hold up to a total of 8, but we solved it with four. I’m honestly not sure if it would be much fun with 8.
So what are your thoughts on Escape Rooms?
If you are in Florida, preferably east coast, central to south, or around Orlando, let me know if there’s any particular ones you love!
- 14 comments, 27 replies
- Comment
WORKER BEES! HERCULES! TURKEY GREASE! AWESOME!
I love them. They are pricey though
I have done a couple as team-building exercises and with friends. All I can say is they are interesting.
It is easy to quickly determine the “A” types in the room. Admittedly I fall into that category, but given this is a game I dial it back A LOT. Generally I throw out an opinion and if no one takes it I move along. I don’t tend to get caught up like everyone else.
I tend to enjoy standing back and observing how everyone reacts, who takes the lead, who are the analytical thinkers, etc.
@tinamarie1974 when doing it as a team building exercise, it was interesting to see who did two things. One was the people who stepped up that you wouldn’t expect. The other were the (mostly) leaders who were actually just about worthless at teamwork or contributing.
@djslack yup! I like studying the human element. Escape rooms are fascinating in that regard!
@djslack @tinamarie1974 I love escape rooms, but I actually had one experience that a “leader” manage to suck all the fun out of it. We probably weren’t half way thru the endeavor when we ran out of time.
It was a team building event for work (1 group of 5 vs 1 group of 6), and in the following months, when we losers demanded a rematch (insisting on the leader switching teams) the results were predictable. Fearless leader bogged down his new team to dismal failure. The sad part is he was totally oblivious and both times insisted the problem was that nobody was “following his lead”.
@djslack @DrWorm @tinamarie1974 I did go in a little worried because I tend to want to be in control. My friend that had already done escape rooms before was about on my level. We both took charge and sent the others for clues.
I think in the end we made a good team. There was one person that didn’t think she’d be helpful at all but she did find some stuff we missed. I think next time I need to give up more control. I was looking at wiring diagrams and ciphers that I could of left to someone else. I felt a little greedy. I feel a little bad about it and want to make sure she gets included more next time. She did say she had a great time and wants to go again, so I guess it’s not as bad as I thought.
@RiotDemon it’s a tricky balance. You want everyone to be included and have fun, but it’s the rare group that can function well without someone being in control and coordinating things. A good thing is recognizing something like the wiring diagrams, that “hey, this is something I’m not good at, but I need to get Jane over here, this is her thing” instead of burning time trying to figure it out. If you go with the same group a few times, you’ll all start to learn, oh, a visual cipher, that’s this person’s deal. Math, that’s this other person. Then you can take on rooms and feel like super geniuses because you’re multiplying everyone’s effectiveness.
A lady I used to work with left to start some escape rooms a couple of years ago. They are amazing. She and her family always did production on professional haunted houses every Halloween, so their prop building skills are on point. And their puzzles are excellent as well. I even built a prop for them (a rotary dial phone for a 1930’s mafia themed room, it answered a clue number as well as a couple of red herrings, and if you dialed 867-5309 you’d get Tommy and the Tutones. They never discovered that).
I’ve done some of their rooms with friends and family, and we went in with work as a team building exercise as well. Probably five or six rooms total, not counting the test rooms I’ve done at her house and in their storefront. My sister is addicted to them. I feel the same issue having started with the best we have around. I hope that they are able to weather the Covid difficulties and be successful on the other end.
@djslack Tommy and the Tutones was a nice touch!
@djslack how did you program the phone?
@RiotDemon the phone was driven by an arduino with an MP3 player component from adafruit. It detected the hook status, played an MP3 of dial tone, “listened” for pulses, decoded the digits based on timing, and routed to either a busy signal if an unknown number was dialed or a recording of ringing and the applicable message if one of the known numbers was dialed. I lucked out that the mp3 board was able to drive the antique phone’s earpiece well. All the goodies were contained in the wooden case of the phone, with a micro USB for power going to the phone instead of a phone cord. It was a fun project. I hope I still have the code somewhere.
@djslack sounds pretty cool! I’ll be honest, I don’t understand coding. Was this something you did for fun or did you go to school for it?
@RiotDemon eh, mostly the former. I went to school for CIS after deciding engineering wasn’t going to cooperate with my activities outside of class, but that didn’t cover any of this. And I mostly did CIS because I knew most of it already (except the Fortran and Cobol they were still teaching back then).
That was my first Arduino project, actually. My second was similar but easier, it just had to play a sound when a button was pressed. It started because she had the need, and I said it sounded like something doable. I asked her for a phone and to buy the parts, I think that was it. Then I got to googling and finding parts that would work, and it all worked out. Arduino is super easy to work with, and a good place to start if you want to build electronic stuff.
Her son since learned to do arduino development and they have made some neat things for their escape rooms, like cabinets that detect a knock pattern to open a latch only when you knock the proper sequence.
@djslack Are you referencing The Secret Chambers in Fort Worth (and now Arlington), Texas? If so, I’ve done most of their rooms and they are AMAZING. I can not say enough good things about them…other than the expense (which is totally justified, I’m just cheap) and the fact that it takes a while for them to open new rooms (again, totally justified given the level of detail, the immersive environment, the custom puzzles, the amazing room hosts who are in costume and in character, etc).
I recently did their newest room, an Edgar Allen Poe themed room and it was a ton of fun. The biggest issue I had was that my team is good at escape rooms and we naturally divide up the tasks so we don’t always all get to experience every aspect of the room. And there were some really cool custom puzzles and neat aspects of the game. We do like to spend any extra time at the end (time we would have had remaining had we not escaped) exploring the puzzles and elements of the room we didn’t work on. But it’s not quite the same as during the game.
@gt0163c nope, but I will plug them here: Escape SBC in Shreveport/Bossier City, LA.
The room I made the phone for had been retired for some time so I was comfortable speaking about it, but looking at their website now it looks like it’s been brought back so I need to shut up about it.
There are ones where they have a chained zombie in the room, and as the time progresses the chain is released bit by bit so he can get closer to you. If you are “bitten” you are out.
@ELUNO haha, I like this.
@ELUNO I did one like that. It had more physical type challenges than mental as well. It was a lot of fun but in a different way than most I’ve done.
I love Escape Rooms. I’ve done over 10 of them in three states, two countries and even one online (with Zoom). My favorite are the ones with hidden rooms, but I will admit the ‘hacker’ one we did online was pretty cool. We did Hackflitration at Puzzle Break in Seattle as a team building event - all online and it was worth it. Split into two teams and raced against each other - https://www.puzzlebreak.us/virtual-teambuilding
@kykazaa I can’t remember who suggested it to me a while back, but I did play the steam game “The Room” 1 and 2. I haven’t finished the second one. It was a little frustrating to me not being able to interact with the objects with my hands. Maybe a VR experience would be better for me.
I am kind of glad I have never had to do one as part of a team building exercise. I would either sit there and not help or actively work against everyone.
@yakkoTDI why is that?
@RiotDemon @yakkoTDI
Dunno. Seems a liitle sus to me.
/image emergency meeting
My family loves them. We did our first (and by far the best) while on a spring break trip to the Gatlinberg area of TN. We’ve done many more since. None of the other ones we’ve done in Northeast FL or Orlando have been anywhere near as well designed or immersive, and one of them was just dumb. And yet we enjoyed all of them (less so the dumb one…). Highly addictive! We’ve even done a couple of “escape room in a box” home games. They are obviously limited by the format, but my family has still found them enjoyable.
I would say the sweet spot for escape rooms is 4 or 5. More than that and it is too hectic. In addition, you can’t keep track of that one person that insists on carrying the clues around with him. Less than that and you run the risk of having a blind spot in puzzle solving (e.g. having just logic skills or just intuitive skills, missing strong math ability or mastering of trivia )
@DrWorm I started doing escape rooms with a group of four. We’ve since grown to 5 (one guy got married so we now include his wife) and it’s a great number. It helps that we’re a big bunch of geeks who all love games and puzzles. The inclusion of the new spouse has helped up our diversity (she’s the least science/math geeky and is great at suggesting the more obvious answer that the rest of us sometimes miss because we’re flying our STEM flag too high). It helps that the two couples are related (brother and sister and their respective spouses) and we play table top games together. So we all know each other well and can do a lot of communication via shorthand and random gestures when we get flustered and lose our nouns or verbs.
First helpful hint: Groupon
There may not be good deals going right now because of Covid but Groupon usually has good offers on them. I’ve only done one but I would love to do a ton more.
Second helpful hint: Choose a diverse team
I found that several people who thought they wouldn’t be of any use actually figured out some unique clues. Every single person in our group contributed in some way and we were one of the fastest times to get out of our particular room.
@cinoclav yeah, I did check Groupon. Unfortunately nothing for the place we were going. I just looked again and there is a place around an hour away… On Groupon $132 for the whole room. Which isn’t that great for four people. About the same as we paid. Looked on their website and you can book the entire room for $99. So definitely not a bargain through Groupon, lol. Guess it pays to do research.
I have done a few. I really enjoyed most of them, only one horrible experience. Went to one that allowed mixed groups randomly when friends were in from out of town and just walked in off the street as we randomly passed. Thought we had a room to ourselves and at last minute a couple walked in and was pushed into our group. They were “expert puzzle room speed runners” who bragged about completing rooms in 23 states. They were assholes, like grabbing items from my hand when I would first pick them up and scream out for hints if couldn’t figure an item out within 15 seconds. My group basically sat it out after 15 minutes of their douchebaggery where it took everything in my power to not take a swing at the one asshole when he shoved me out of the way when I noticed a clue to look at it first. It was so bad the place unasked apologized for their behavior and gave 75% off discount vouchers for a future booking. After that swore to never do a non-exclusive room again.
Most interesting was a robbery mission that had my group escaping from a van, climbing through ducts, evading a laser grid and then hacking a computer system. By far most physical and was perfect for my low/mid teen cousins who I took for a fun day activity.
By far most impressive show/effect quality was 5 Wits, which has multiple locations. Less of an escape room (as not locked in, has exit doors if want to leave) but a puzzle experience. Puzzles are more fun then brain teasing but the effects…if Universal Studios made an escape room it would be this. Very impressive game quality, perfect for younger individuals or people just looking for something different and fun. Once the world goes back to normal I’m sure I will check out more. Lots of fun, if have a crowd who likes these types of things.
@Raider your mixed group experience is why when I saw the local room allows that, it turned me away. That sounded like a completely awful experience!
@Raider there is a really physical room that my friend already did. It’s viking themed and you have to crawl between two different ships throughout the entire game. It’s also rated for experienced teams. He said he was exhausted at the end.
I’d love to see it, but I think I need a few more rooms under my belt before I do that one.
Does anyone play escape games online?
https://jayisgames.com/escape/
Most have walkthroughs in case you get stuck.
My wife has been to the one in Port St. Lucie a couple times (before C19). She loved it. I have yet to try them, but there are a couple in Vero Beach too…
@jaybird looks like the psl and vero ones are owned by the same company. The psl one says it’s not private rooms.
@RiotDemon Ah, she went with a group from work and they were alone in the rooms as there were enough people in the group to fill it.
@ELUNO omg. I’m dying of cringe. I used to watch this but I had to stop. It just got worse and worse. I can’t.
@RiotDemon lol, I went to the theater to watch their movie when it came out. But yeah, it’s pretty much over for me now…
@ELUNO I don’t know what’s happened to me in the last 5-10 years. My empathy meter has jumped through the roof. I just can’t watch these types of videos anymore. Even just that short few minute clip made me physically uncomfortable and I had to scroll away from the video and stop it completely towards the end after they made him continue the room.
@RiotDemon I get it. It can be a bit too much. I loved watching all their shows but now it seems more and more like they enjoy it too much and seems even more fake/staged.