While I was in Utah a few weeks ago, I went to my first escape room with my sister Heather and her family. I had no idea what to expect really. We went to Alcatraz Escape Rooms and picked a Harry Potter themed room.
They put us and another group of 4 or 5 (total strangers to us--my first thought was that I would have to work and talk with people I didn't know) into a dark room the size of a small dining room. I'm looking around completely clueless about how to start while they went over the rules. Then we were off.
Everyone starts scrambling and I have no idea what to scramble for. I noticed that there were colored pennants on the wall. Most people were working on figuring out what the two foot columns were for when I called out that there were pennants on the wall. Someone who knew what they were doing decided to match the colors with the columns to get a combination. Okay then, I see how this works now.
There was a chest set with a clue to find the white queen's winning play with several examples of the game board. This is where I become both brilliant and a complete moron at the same time. Brilliant, because I know enought about chess that I immediately knew the correct sequence and loaded them on the board. A moron because as soon as I placed the final piece a trap door opened in the wall behind me and a wand popped out. I give the wand to my sister's daughter, but I did not get the connection that it came from the chess piece. I don't know how much more time I wasted trying to figure out that chess game that I had already solved.
It so it went. I had moments of brilliance and moments of being utterly clueless. It was really fun though, with lots of laughter and even working with strangers who were okay. It seems like we were smarter than we gave ourselves credit for because we kept second-guessing ourselves. We ended up escaping with five minutes to spare so Huzzah to us!
I highly recommend these as good family fun!
