Have fun with history in these escape rooms
From Cold War escapes to Prohibition-era bootlegging, an adventure for everyone
1. Casa Loma, Toronto The historic Toronto mansion offers two extremely popular escape room games, developed and operated by Company and Co. and a third launches this month.
You can “escape from the tower,” set in 1941 with a team recruited to an undercover anti-submarine detection research centre with only an hour to find the enemy’s U-boat co-ordinates.
Or play “king of the bootleggers” in the tunnel beneath Casa Loma, which has been turned into a 1920s speakeasy.
Coming at the end of March, go inside Toronto’s post-Second World War-era “Station M,” a code name for the British Security Coordination’s secret spy-gear manufacturing facility.
All of the games incorporate some of the home’s real history with fictional elements added on, said Leonardo Dell’Anno, Escape from Casa Loma general manager.
“Station M was said to have had a secret lair, somewhere in or around this area.” 2. Bletchley Park, U.K. As captured in 2014’s Oscar-nominated film The Imitation Game, this historic mansion was central to Britain’s codebreaking efforts during the Second World War and the spot where mathematician Alan Turing and his team cracked Germany’s infamous Enigma code.
Opening this month, the escape game takes place in “E-block,” which was the old centre for radio transmissions during the war.
Teams must work together to solve puzzles and crack codes, just as the codebreakers did more than 70 years ago with much higher stakes. 3. Escape from East Berlin, Germany When visiting the German capital you can go back in time with this escape room game from German company The Room.
Taking place in the 1980s during the Cold War, this game is for teams of two to five players.
“Your emigration application to the ‘Golden West’ has been rejected and things start to get tricky. But surprisingly you receive a tip from a secret source: There is a way to the West — you only have to find it,” reads the site.
“Get off your couch! Forget your computer, smartphone and boring history books. With us you’ll experience Berlin’s history,” it promises. 4. Gamescape Paris, France This company offers three historic escape games in the City of Light.
Players can try to escape from shackles inside the royal jail of La Bastille or from Gustave Eiffel’s locked office by solving puzzles. They can also take the “alchemist’s challenge,” sorting through the mysteries of famous French alchemist Nicolas Flamel. Each of the three scenarios are based on real legends and iconic figures of the city’s history, wrote Irving Le Hen of the company in an email, and learning is part of the process.
In the Gustave Eiffel room, for example, players can find real coins more than 100 years old and hand-drawn copies of Eiffel’s blueprints for a bridge in France. 5. Nuclear Bunker Escape Room, Prague Another Cold War-inspired escape game, this one takes place in a recreated bunker in the Czech Republic capital, complete with period costumes and gas masks.
Your team’s mission? To find secret documents the resistance has hidden in a fallout shelter that could cause regime change in the Soviet Union before they fall into the hands of Russian KGB agents.