Editorials

I’m surprised by how difficult it is to keep apprised of which escape room businesses are opening new rooms.  Every business has its own newsletter, but most of these get dumped into the Gmail “promotion” folder and get lost in the shuffle, especially given how many of the escape rooms I signed up for send out “remember we exist” emails that drown out more important announcements.  So what’s the best way to stay informed?

I’ve seen more and more escape rooms advertising that they offer only private experiences.  While in general this is a nice perk, I have to admit I have conflicted feelings about it. While some of my worst experiences have been getting dumped in with other groups, I’ve also got a lot of great memories from this kind of arrangement.

For a while before my wedding, nearly all my time was dedicated to getting the wedding arrangements in order. Christina and I still had some adventures, but time was minimal for doing pretty much anything else. It was a huge shift to spend more than a week “taking it easy.”

There’s never been a better time to be a fan of puzzles. Escape rooms are the most obvious recent development, but the worldwide enthusiasm for puzzles didn’t stop there. One of my favorite new developments is the online puzzle challenge.

As someone who keeps track of how many escape rooms I’ve done, I’ve got a predicament of what counts toward that total. 

It’s been a few years since I’ve taken a close look at the Geocaching website. The mobile app gives me the full toolkit I need to find and log caches, so I’ve never felt the need to go online. On a whim I took a look yesterday, and all I can say is “WOW.”

You’re opening a new escape room and you only have one opportunity to beta test it.  You can either bring in a team of family and friends who generally like the idea and enjoy puzzles, or you can bring out a hardcore escape room enthusiast, say one who solved an escape room in every state in under a year.  What do you do?