An Escape Room is where you pay someone to lock you and several other people into a room and you have to solve incredibly difficult clues to get out of said room. They can be used for family outings (not my family, that kind of stress would have us setting the room on fire and someone getting punched in the face), corporate team building exercises, and groups of cocky friends who think they’ll escape in no time at all.
I have wanted to do an Escape Room since I saw it on Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
My husband and I went to visit his family this Christmas, and guess what y’all? A friend of the family gave us a voucher to go to an Escape Room. In Arkansas. This was set to either be amazing or the intro to the next Saw movie.
Now, I say his family, not to be a jerk, because I love my Sister-In-Law and Mother-In-Law from the bottom of my heart and truly believe I was #blessed in the in-law department when I got them, but because I wanted to make it known that it was his family we were locked in with. Not mine. Like I said before, if it had been mine, things would be on fire, someone would be crying, and my mother would ask herself where she went wrong.
Nowhere, Mom. You didn’t go wrong. You just raised three very different and very strong minded kids who all enjoy torturing each other. Those things make for great family gatherings in short bursts, but terrible when the object is to work together to escape anything. Unless we’re escaping our other family members at reunions. Then we’re like a SEAL team, united to the end with a mission to quickly and quietly eliminate any and all obstacles in our path.
I digress. So we go to the Escape Room after a heavy lunch of tacos and margaritas and we are ready to amaze everyone.
My SIL and I picked out the hardest room to escape from. Naturally. The room we choose was a mix of Alice in Wonderland and a little girl’s day dream.
I’m not allowed to tell you much about the room, the clues, or the process by which you actually get out of said room, but I can tell you this: it. was. so. hard.
We were told that we needed to work together and to designate a leader for the room. We did work together but there was no clear leader for our group. We just kind of bounced from person to person while we went about scouting the room for clues.
As we would get stumped on the clues or even where to look for them, we would all agree to ask the magical voice listening to us for a clue. Within seconds (which is good because everything is timed) we would be gifted with a clue on what to do.
Y’all, we almost didn’t make it out, but WE DID! We escaped. That may have been my most proud moment in 2016, opening a door. #LowStandards
I totally want to do another Escape Room. The day before we had done a golf cart cave tour that had a drive thru bar inside the cave. It was glorious. The Escape Room tied with the golf cart thing. That’s how amazing it was.
I want to say a HUGE thank you to Tania for the excellent experience and to Bolt NWA for hosting us.
