The newest great escape? Getting out of your room
miami beach, fla. » I like to think of myself as relatively quick-witted, but I started having serious doubts about my cleverness as I stood handcuffed to my new Russian friend, trying get out of a prison cell.
It wasn’t a real prison cell, which is why I wasn’t having a panic attack. But the handcuffs were real, and being chained to another person while searching a small room for keys and clues as a clock ticked down became frustrating pretty quickly.
Believe it or not, this was all part of a game. Real-life room-escape attractions began opening nearly a decade ago in Asia and Eastern Europe, but they’ve been popping up in North America over the past few years. The attractions trace their origins back to escape-the-room video games, where players were trapped and forced to use clues and objects in their surroundings to get out. Now that concept has moved into the real world.
Escape the Quest opened in Miami Beach in July. They offer two games— Apartment 101 and Prison Escape— withMental Hospital coming soon. Groups of two to four have an hour to solve the puzzle and win their freedom. I participated in Prison Escape, joining a group of expat Russians in their mid-20s— Alex Belousov, Konstantin Elizarov and Lucy Omelchenko— who moved to South Florida within the past two years. Their English was heavily accented, and my Russian is nonexistent, adding a language barrier to a challenge that only about 20 percent of groups complete successfully,