Embrace your inner adventure game geek and explore an escape room with us
Culture
I've been to a couple of escape rooms but I always find myself wondering, how do these things get put together?
So I took two of my friends, Jess and Stephanie to Escape Room LA to solve that puzzle.
Hello ladies.
All right are we ready to go?
Okay so grab your stuff and follow me.
Today we are doing the Alchemist Escape Room.
Which apparently will involve us saving humanity and going back in time.
Or as I like to call it Tuesday.
Who dares enter my secret library.
This is a gorgeous escape room already.
I need to talk to the mad man who put all this together.
I'm John Hennessey, I am the creator of Escape Room LA.
I grew up playing CD-ROM-based video games, Myst-
This guy just became my new best friend.
I love a game where you find yourself in a strange environment.
And you don't really have clear direction about what to do or where to start.
Okay, are you ready to open the scroll?
I'm ready.
[LAUGH]
I wonder what's in it.
If you've never an escape room before, just come with an open mind.
And be ready to talk Out loud, and think out loud.
It's like a [UNKNOWN] it looks like a [UNKNOWN]
You're not using your phone, you're not using technology.
You found it.
[UNKNOWN] the circle.
When people finally see the solution, it's just like this my God, and that's the best feeling to see.
[UNKNOWN].
[LAUGH] Secret door leading into an alchemist's lab, a tale as old as time.
Okay.
Wah!
Are there bodies in here?
I don't know, but it looks really scary.
Wow, look, guys.
Wow.
We walk into a hallway with candles and it's dark.
And literally, that's all I want in my apartment.
We do work with a theater designer.
So we kind of work together to figure out how these things are actually going to get built and how they're going to work and how they're going to last for game after game after day after day.
[INAUDIBLE] insane.
Like [INAUDIBLE].
Air like color, water, fire, air, earth.
If we find [UNKNOWN] Captain Planet is going to show up.
There is a lock here which is [UNKNOWN].
Cinnamon bark has a smell to it?
Yep, they all have smells.
Boy!
[INAUDIBLE]
Okay.
Smells like Big Red.
I have to admit, using your sense of smell, not something I have ever experienced before in an escape room.
But, my nose is up to the task.
Eucalyptus maybe.
You feeling it?
Let me try.
I think you might be right.
Okay.
Okay, so yellow.
W.
I'm having a really hard time telling the difference between all the liquids.
I thought what lavender smelled like but right now, I have no idea.
It worked.
Did it.
What does it smell like?
And it's the key.
Our noses don't work anymore.
[SOUND]
For an escape room that is not horror themed there sure seems to be a lot of jump scares here.
Look now wonder unders.
Great.
What?
Alright it has got to go in there.
Now we can move on to the last puzzle in the room, fire.
We are going to put some fire here in post.
No we can't do that.
It's just.
Hit the fire monitor.
That's just good life advice.
So when we knew we were gonna have a laser in this room, we knew we had to make it awesome.
I'm not sure if we're gonna make it to point the laser into the gargoyle, it's really shaky.
[LAUGH]
Okay done.
[LAUGH]
It's like [INAUDIBLE] No it's so fire.
We did it, we beat the alchemist.
But after talking to John and Steph it was pretty obvious that creating the experience of an escape room Is a lot more difficult and challenging than coming in and just solving the puzzles like we did.
They're like real life point and click adventure games.
I mean, it's like being in a video game.
And at the end of the day, us one, Escape Room zero.
[MUSIC]