11 things that happen to everyone in an escape room

Will I have a panic attack in an escape room?

This is a question that most people ask the first time they hear of the interactive real-life escape room games that have taken over North America in the last couple of years. For some reason, people think that an escape room is a panic room built for one, that will make you feel claustrophobic and potentially kill you. It won’t.

Now that we have that out of the way and you on well on your way to booking your first escape room adventure, let me share a little bit about what to expect.

After my second go at an escape room, I am pretty much an expert. For round two, we were able to go and test out one of the rooms at the newest Locked Room location on Southland Dr. in Calgary, which opens today – Friday, March 18. The Locked Room owners started the first escape room location in Calgary in 2014 – so they know what’s up.

The new location has four rooms: The Great Train Heist, The Sinister Study, The Lair of Minotaur and Hipster Hangover.

Of course, we were put in the Hipster Hangover room because we seemed like that type of group that may actually wake up, after a night of being blackout, in a stranger’s house and have no idea how we got there. (NOTE: This adult-only room has an 18+ age restriction). I mean, we do look like a fairly sketchy crew…

This photo was taken after the room kicked our butts and we had to request an extra fifteen minutes to solve the final puzzles.

So what about you? What will your escape room experience be like? After the initial shock of being left alone in the room with little to no instruction except for “figure it out”, the following things will probably happen:

• You will be confused for at least the first five minutes and you will assume they forgot to tell you something.
• You will find an object that you are CERTAIN is a clue that will open one of the locks and you will spend WAY too much time assessing what that could be, when in reality it is actually just a decorative piece of the room.
• You will miss something by not moving a piece of furniture the right way. Oh, you didn’t know you needed to turn that dresser on a 90 degree angle and pull every other drawer out to and sing It’s a Small World to open the closet? Well, you should have.
• You will solve a puzzle…by fluke or by smarts, it doesn’t matter. It will happen and you will feel like Einstein.
• You will want to (and probably will) press the help buzzer. All escape rooms have staff members that watch you on camera run around in circles while trying to get out. While their main purpose sounds like it is just to be entertained, they are also there to help you when you get stuck.
• You will be annoyed after the staff gives you a clue because you will think “How the hell were we supposed to know that?”
• You will give up on a puzzle and just let someone else in your group take it on.
• You will think that one of the answers is so obvious that it can’t be a real.
• You will be really thankful you are not in the room alone, trying to figure out all of these puzzles by yourself.
• You will either completely forget about the clock, or you will be haunted by the one hour countdown going on on the wall from start to finish.
• You will think about what it would have been like trying to solve these puzzles drunk…and how impossible it would have been. (Unless you are drunk, and in that case you will be thinking “whose ill-informed idea was this…”)

If you’re looking to try an escape room, we definitely recommend one of the Locked Rooms in Calgary. If you’re somewhere else in Canada, there are many to choose from. See the list below for other Canadian escape room locations!

• Exit – Richmond, Vancouver, Kelowna, BC
• Xcape Vancouver – Richmond, BC
• Time Escape – Richmond. BC
• Lockdown Escape – Richmond, BC
• Freeing Canada Station – Richmond, BC
• Trapped Vancouver -Richmond, BC
• Countdown Escape Rooms – Abbotsford, BC
• KRAKIT Room – Burnaby, BC
• Smarty Pants – Vancouver, BC
• Epic Escape – Victoria, BC
• Breakout Entertainment – Edmonton, AB
• Escape Edmonton – Edmonton, AB
• Escape from LA – Lethbridge, AB
• The Locked Room – Calgary, AB
• Level 1 Escape – Calgary, AB
• Epic Escape – Winnipeg , MB
• Enigma Escape – Winnipeg, MB
• The Real Escape – Winnipeg, MB
• Escape Key – Brantford, ON
• Exit Strategy – Burlington, ON
• Adventure Rooms – Kitchener and Niagara Falls, ON
• Escape – London, ON
• Exodus London Escape Rooms – London, ON
• Mystery Escape Rooms – London, ON
• Claustrophobia – Ottawa, ON
• Escape Manor – Ottawa, ON
• Jigsaw Escape Room – Ottawa, ON
• ESC-IT – Markham, ON
• Locked In – Markham, ON
• Mr. Escape Room – Markham, ON
• Omescape – Markham, ON
• Prison Breaker – Markham, ON
• Trapped – Markham, ON
• Xscape Zone – Markham, ON
• Xscaper – Markham, ON
• De-code – Mississauga, ON
• Pani.Q – Mississauga, ON
• X-Treme Escape – Mississauga, ON
• Escape Room – Niagara Falls, ON
• Great Escape – North York, ON
• Escape Maze, Peterborough, ON
• Origin Room Break – Richmond Hill, ON
• BreakOut Team Adventures – Scarborough, ON
• Escape Mission – Scarborough, ON
• Xscaper – Scarborough, ON
• The Hour – St. Catherines, ON
• AT Escape – Toronto, ON
• Escape Games – Toronto, ON
• Mission 45 – Toronto, ON
• Mystery Rooms – Toronto, ON
• NextRelic Inc. – Toronto, ON
• Real Escape Escape Game – Toronto, ON
• A Double Tour – Quebec City, QC
• A/Maze – Montreal, QC
• Trapped – Montreal, QC
• Trapped – Halifax, NS
• The Great Escape – Halifax, NS
• Captured Escape – Halifax, NS
• Escape Logic Games – Fredricton, NB
• Breakout – Saint John, NB
• Room Escape Cavendish – PEI
• Escape Quest – St. John’s, NL