Rewind 12 months ago and I had only ever done 2 escape rooms, both with my friends, and we escaped each time. I loved them! My first one was in Leeds at The Great Escape and the second was at Enigma in Wakefield (Alice in Wonderland - highly recommended). Little did I realise that this would spark the journey into turning what could just be a fun hobby, into a business, literally a year later.
We started doing escape rooms at a rate of knots, we travelled all over, even to Amsterdam to try out some amazing places! Some of the highlights include...
Project Breakout (Brighouse)
Stuck in the Riddle (Huddersfield)
Unescapable (Derby)
Enigma (Wakefield)
The Escaporium (Halifax)
Lucardo (Manchester)
Escape Hull (Hull)
There were many other amazing rooms and if you are ever wanting more recommendations, please drop me a message.
Around December 2019, I was working at Castle Howard with my normal job (magician - is that even normal?!) over in York and started looking into possible venues to build an escape room. At this point we had done around 40+ rooms and definitely had the bug!
We had been to view a couple of different venues in Ossett but they were't quite right... I was then going for a haircut when I bumped into an old friend from school. We got talking, as you do and the topic of hunting for a venue for the escape room came up. He mentioned that his Dad had somewhere suitable, so we arranged a viewing! It was a success and by the start of January we were good to go!
The hardest part initially was the clear out and reconfiguration. How many rooms did we want? How big could we make them? Ripping walls down, making new doorways, building stud walls, boarding, plastering etc.
We had already decided on the theme of 2 of the 3 rooms, One was based around the Titanic and the other based around Houdini, with the 3rd room being open to options. We decided to start with the Titanic room. We had spent a lot of time writing and designing the room, we already had a few suitable props and puzzle ideas, so it seemed the logical choice.
We were pretty much on track to be open around mid/late March, then Covid 19 struck and we had to down tools for a while, this was followed by a nationwide shortage of plaster, which meant we couldn't finish the room. Fortunately, after a drive to sunny Doncaster, we managed to get enough (twice the price) to be able to complete the room. Then it was a case of making sure all the tech worked, microphones, monitors, cctv etc, which was a learning curve in itself.
We have spent the last week or so, finishing off the last few bits in preparation for opening towards the end of July. Just the small matter of testing over the next 2 weeks and we are good to go.
Hope to see you all soon!
The Escapable Team
