Escape Room

St. Louis, MO: St. Louis Escape – Subway

December 3, 2018 Brian Gondek 0

May 25, 2018 – St. Louis Escape looks scary from the outside.  You enter through an unadorned staircase adjacent to a loading dock.  The entrance is well-labeled, thankfully, and that gives you the confidence to keep you moving forward, though you reach for your cell phone to make sure you can call for help if you run into any trouble.  And then you enter the lobby and find all your concerns were for naught, as St. Louis Escape actually has a really spacious and comfy lobby which gives you plenty to do (puzzles, games, pinball) while you wait for your […]

Louisville, CO: Rabbit Hole Recreation Services – Mystic Temple

November 17, 2018 Brian Gondek 0

November 2, 2018- I get asked a lot what escape rooms I’ve done have been my best or my favorite, and I’ve always deflected those questions.  One of the reasons I can still enjoy escape rooms after solving 300+ is that each room is so different, and most aren’t even trying to do the same thing.  Sometimes it’s a cinematic experience meant for a small group.  Sometimes it’s a communications exercise for a large group.  It can be a linear brainteaser or a tangle of parallel tracks.  Different people will like different styles of rooms more than others, and unless I know […]

Brighton, MA: Komnata Quest – Boxed Up

October 23, 2018 Brian Gondek 0

September 22, 2018 – I had first heard of Boxed Up more than a year ago, but at the time, all I registered was that it was somewhere on the east coast and sounded neat.  An escape room where two teammates are locked in adjacent coffins and need to find some way to get out by solving puzzles in the confined space.  I hadn’t given it much of a second thought until I saw the description of it while visiting Komnata Quest.

Brighton, MA: Komnata Quest – St. Angelo’s Castle

October 17, 2018 Brian Gondek 0

September 22, 2018 – Hot off our completion of our first and only Rhode Island escape room (Escape Rhode Island – Escape The Bunker), Christina and I headed up the highway to meet her uncle Dan near Boston.  We settled on the just-off-the-path Brighton, Massachusetts, right near Komnata Quest.  I heard about Komnata Quest from an escape room enthusiast I ran into in Los Angeles earlier this year, so I was eager to see what tricks it had in store.

Providence, RI: Escape Rhode Island – Escape the Bunker

October 3, 2018 Brian Gondek 0

September 22, 2018 – Early flights always catch me off guard.  A 6AM flight sounds wonderful in concept.  Get up a little bit early, sleep on the plane, and wake up well-rested somewhere far away with the whole day ahead of me.  Then I actually get to the day of the flight and I remember how early I have to wake up to catch that 6AM flight…  Get to the airport at least an hour before takeoff, and shower before that.  When all is said and done, I’m probably getting up before 4.

Las Cruces, NM: Lost Cruces – The Heist

September 2, 2018 Brian Gondek 0

August 25, 2018 (flashback) – After the misadventures on my journey from Phoenix to Tucson, I grabbed brunch with my friend Adil and scheduled our escape room at Lost Cruces, an escape room in Las Cruces, New Mexico.  We narrowly avoided a disaster by realizing just in time that New Mexico is an hour ahead of Arizona, and we adjusted our booking time accordingly.  After a pit stop at a gas station called “The Thing?” (I’m still not sure what The Thing is.  It could be an alien, it could be a mummy), we were on our four hour trek […]

Fords, NJ: Escape Room Woodbridge – Museum Heist

August 19, 2018 Brian Gondek 0

July 28, 2018 – Immediately after getting back to New York City from Connecticut, I set my sights on New Jersey.  I headed immediately for Penn Station, only having a minute or two to stop and try New York style pizza (which I admit I prefer over Chicago style, sue me).  One of the trains was canceled, so the station was in chaos and I had to fight my way onto the train for the privilege of standing on a crammed train car.  With the little space I had, I slipped my phone out of my pocket and booked a […]

Stamford, CT: Trap’t – Time Chasers

August 14, 2018 Brian Gondek 0

July 28, 2018 – Grabbing a coffee at Culture Espresso in New York City, I pull out my phone and scan over a map of the northern metro rail.  New Haven appears to be the biggest city in Connecticut on the line… but Stamford is a lot closer.  I cross-check “Stamford” and “escape room”, and voila: Trap’t!

Anchorage, AK: Alaska Escape Rooms – The Raven’s Eye

July 15, 2018 Brian Gondek 1

June 1, 2018 (Flashback) – It’s about time for me to get back to the story of the journey across the Pacific Northwest, centered around a cruise from Seward, AK to Vancouver, BC.  The trip began with an overnight flight from Chicago to Anchorage, and after arriving in Anchorage well before the crack of dawn, I had a few hours to spend in town.