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 to Las Cruces.
Upon our arrival, the owner of Lost Cruces greeted Adil and me warmly. He was excited to hear that we were making an eight hour round trip just for the sake of solving a one hour escape room challenge, and it was wonderful chatting with him about escape rooms in general. Pretty soon we were ready to dive into The Heist.
In short, I loved The Heist. The room looks simple enough to start, a classy parlor with photos from around the world, golf trophies, and other touches appropriate for the setting. As I explored the room, I slowly found that it’s filled to the brim with cinematic surprises and little “a ha!” moments to keep players guessing. Players are rewarded for paying special attention to small details and for thinking of different methods to attack the various challenges.
I mentioned the word “cinematic,” and I want to emphasize again how central that word is to the feel of this room. The design of the room is very immersive, even the hint system, which itself is part puzzle, part theatrics, and part clue. The hints themselves (which I admit to using one or two) were perfectly done to give us a little nudge without spoiling the puzzles for us. The space often reacts to what the participants do, and it’s usually quite unexpected, even for someone who has solved 250+ escape rooms.
The puzzles were very fun and VERY unique. Sometimes I thought I solved a puzzle only to discover I was just getting started with it. With all the twists and turns, the room kept us guessing, but it was always fun, never frustrating.
We completed our heist and walked away with the diamond ring!
We had a fantastic time, and we immediately tried seeing if we could jump right into the other room at Lost Cruces, Ariana’s Wedding. Unfortunately, we were already on pace to get back to Tucson in the early AM, even worse for me coming from the central time zone, so we had to hit the road. Already I’m thinking about planning my next visit to the area so Adil and I can check out the other room.
One other small note is that Lost Cruces was giving away complimentary bottles of water which could also be redeemed for a scoop of custard at a nearby restaurant (is there a word for custard shop?), and the custard was delicious. Neither of us was adventurous enough to try the green chile shake, but it was a fun pit stop to conclude our trip before making the four hour return journey.
Call me crazy, but I feel it was definitely worth an eight hour round trip to check out Lost Cruces, and I’m more than willing to do it again. The room was a blast and perfectly demonstrates how puzzles and theme can be woven together to make a remarkable time for players new and experienced.
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