#4 - Go to an Escape Room

A few months ago, I started working for a team building company.  At my first event, we had some down time and the guy in charge asked me if any of the rest of us had ever done an escape room.  I had never heard of such a thing.  Apparently they were gaining popularity in LA and were slowly creeping down to San Diego.

The idea is that you're stuck in a room and there's a puzzle or a series of puzzles.  I think, originally, the idea was to solve the puzzle in order to escape the room.  I'm imagining that scene in Star Wars when they're in that trash compactor (or whatever. I'm a fan but I don't remember details from movies well).  I'm not sure if there are any actually like that.  There is one in San Diego where there's a zombie chained to the wall and as time goes by, the zombie's chain gets longer.

I heard of escape rooms again from college students at work.  One of the student office assistants had done one and raved about it.  One of the sport club executive board members suggested it for our presidents retreat.

I decided to do some more research.  Then, I found a Groupon.  So I suggested it to Laura Masters who was coming to visit.  Since she and Vanessa Vadnal had met in Catalina a couple years back, we invited Vanessa too.

Vanessa bought us our Groupon and booked us to go to the Houdini room at Great Room Escape in downtown San Diego.  We waited in a big, plain, dingy room and watched facts about Houdini and the human body on a TV screen.  A group of about 7 other people soon joined us.  They did not talk to us.

Then, a woman came in to explain the basic rules and premise.  Houdini's soul was stuck between worlds.  In order to release him to the afterlife, we would hold a seance and would then need to unlock a trunk where his soul was trapped.  Those are pretty much the only instructions we got.  We had to figure the rest out on our own by exploring the room and looking for hints.  I won't say anything else here about the details in case anyone reading this wants to give it a go.

At first, it was quite frustrating.  We didn't know what the clues would look like or where we'd find them.  Plus, there were plenty of decoy hints all over.  And, the group of 7 still wouldn't really talk to us.  When we would ask them what they'd found, they'd glance over their shoulders like, "oh, you're still here?"  That was weird.

Eventually, we found some clues, and the staff member in the room (Houdini's wife) was helpful... sometimes.  Once Vanessa found something, and Houdini's wife exclaimed, "Oh! You found [that thing]!"  Vanessa said something like, "Yeah, in here."  And Houdini's wife said, "I've been looking for that" and proceeded to put it back away.

I really didn't think we were going to make it.  We didn't work as a team well, so there was absolutely no system.  We definitely repeated what others had already done over and over.

But... in the last 5 minutes, we completely unlocked and opened the trunk.  Yay us!  We won!

It was only an hour, but it was one of those situations where you feel like you've been somewhere forever and yet you're not anxious for it to end.  It was super fun and I would love to try another one.

Who wants to go escape more rooms with me?!