Get out!!!

Have you ever heard of a place in Richmond called Exit? The first of its kind in Canada (popular in Asia) it offers 4 theme rooms and you PAY them to let you try to escape. For people who love challenges and games, this is an awesome adventure!

You can choose from the lost ship, prison cell, Egyptian crypt, and laboratory. There is only a 1% success rate (!) with the laboratory being the most challenging. Each session can take up to 6 people, and if you book it with a friend ($45 per couple) you may end up in a room with 4 strangers. This can be awkward and daunting if you are shy or just wanted some quality time with your friend, but the advantage of having more people is that there are now more ways of thinking about the clues.

I had called and asked if I can book an entire room and just put my husband in alone - I thought it would be cool to kidnap him and have him wake up in a room and try to figure a way out. I was looking for a unique 50th birthday adventure. Turns out, you need at least two people to get out of three of the rooms (need four hands??) so they said it might not work. Plus, they don't actually LOCK you in, and you can open the door and walk out anytime. I could see someone having a panic attack as the spaces are quite confined and it gets hot in there...

You are given clues and 45 minutes. If you get super stuck, you can ask the hosts to give you a hint, but only twice! You aren't allowed to bring in any accessories - no pens, paper, cell phones, flashlights, etc. Your belongings and those of your game-mates are locked in your room's assigned locker, and you take the key in with you. I stuffed mine in my bra - ain't nobody gettin' in MY locker! LOL! (Actually, the pockets in the pants I was wearing were super shallow and I didn't want it to fall out if I had to do any crawling around. Which I didn't.)

We decided to do this yesterday on the spur of the moment, as my sister-in-law was in town for hubby's birthday and was taking the kids to Extreme Air Park. (So THAT'S what it's like to have family in town!!! It was so amazing to have a free afternoon!) When I went to book it on line, everything for the next two days was booked, with only one space available in a smattering of rooms. BUT there was ONE room that only had two people booked in it, and that was the Lost Ship (the easiest one, apparently). So we signed up (you only register on line, you pay when you get there), and had an hour to get there. The timing was perfect for us!

The room was surprisingly small. The clues were fairly easy, but there was some confusion with the memory sticks (we found 2 in the room, which you plug into a machine and it plays you a clue). There was already a memory stick plugged in when we walked in, but none of us thought to turn it on and see what it said! So when we found the second one, we played it and got the next clue, but they were numbered 1 and 3, so...if there was a 2, we never found it! LOL!

We ended up not being able to figure out the code for the second door, so we had to ask for a hint with only ten minutes left in our game. The others had wanted to ask for help after 20 minutes because none of our codes would open the door. I dissuaded them because I didn't want our adventure to end when we still had 23 minutes left! When we finally got the hint, we were easily able to open the door, only to find....another room!!! WHAT?!?! WTF?!

If I had known there was another room to escape from, I would've asked for that hint at the 20 minute mark! For SURE! Damn, how disappointing. So now we had less than ten minutes to decipher this room, and when we only had 4 minutes left, we asked for our final hint. That got one lock open for us, but our game ended with still one locked box and an unfound treasure. BLARGH!!!

But with only a 1% success rate I don't feel too bad. It was totally, TOTALLY worth the $50 (total, not each)! We will definitely go back! This is a great team-building exercise, and would be a really fun and creative first date too. The props and special effects were simple but so very cool, and now that I've been there once, I know what to expect next time.

The trouble is that now we know how to get out of that first room - if we are in there with people who have never done it before, I don't want to ruin the experience for them by rushing through to the second room. So I will try to book it on the spur of the moment again, and hope that no walk-ins join us if we do the Lost Ship again.

But I really want to check out the crypt room!!!