The Great Escape Room

Back in September 2015, a Great Escape Room opened in Rochester, on University Avenue. I was so excited and wanted to go, but not alone, with a group of strangers, and I couldn’t recruit anyone to go with me. It’s kind of a nerdy thing to do, I guess; the real-life experience is based on computer games. It’s a mix of scavenger hunt and puzzles in a locked room with a timer set to an hour. The goal is to beat the clock and solve all of the puzzles to get out on your own, rather than fail and be let out when the time is up. 

I realized the ‘escape room’ concept had hit mainstream (or even jumped the shark?) when it was the plot of an episode of The Middle. And yet, I still wanted to go, and I still couldn’t recruit anyone! Finally, my Rocappella singing group agreed, but of course scheduling anything with 10+ people is a daunting task. In the meantime, I had bought a Groupon to an imitation Great Escape Room in Henrietta, and by the time I went to use it, right before expiration, the business had shuttered. (Getting a refund from Groupon was impossible –luckily, Paypal came to my rescue!)

Recently, my “ladies night out” group decided to give this a try, and we had 15 women signed up almost immediately, despite the hefty price ($25 per person).  So this week, we put on our thinking caps and entered “The Library” in The Great Escape Room. After a recorded “Sherlock Holmes” gave us some instructions that we didn’t really understand, our room monitor, “Dr. Watson” (Jasmine, a lovely woman studying criminal justice at Brockport), tried to guide us without actually giving us any answers. We had 5 puzzles to solve, each with a different number of clues that were hidden around the room, in and under things, and a couple only visible in the dark. It was rollicking great fun, and while we worked in small groups on each of the puzzles (I naturally gravitated to the math problem…), we also worked together to find and interpret the clues. This room is advertised as the easiest; 35% escape within the hour, and the quickest escape time was about 35 minutes. With probably more assistance from Dr. Watson than other groups get (although, really, who knows?), we happily made it out with 11 minutes to spare.

I was impressed with the creativity and variety of the puzzles. And unnumbered clues that at first  seemed like maddening mistakes on the part of the organizers in fact turned out not to be numbered for a well-thought-out reason. After we emerged victorious, we all agreed we would happily return again and try a more difficult room. Then we went to a nearby restaurant to celebrate!