Have you ever wanted to transport yourself into an exciting fictional world and become the hero in an epic adventure story? Well, escape rooms allow you to do exactly that in a fun, interactive way with your entire family!
Escape rooms are immersive, real-life puzzle-based games where you and your team are “locked” in a themed room and must uncover clues and solve riddles to accomplish a goal in a limited amount of time, usually 60 minutes.
The Boom in Escape Room Businesses
In recent years, escape rooms have soared in popularity as an entertaining recreational activity that brings families together. Beyond just having fun, escape rooms allow family members to sharpen skills like communication, critical thinking, creativity, and teamwork in an engaging way.
Read on to discover all the ways escape room games create incredible shared experiences and lifelong memories for families.
How Escape Rooms Work
Escape room facilities create elaborate sets and spaces decorated to match an immersive theme. Operators such as Hour To Midnight Escape Rooms host games with themes such as haunted houses, old-timey jails, and secret labs. Some escape rooms even have futuristic setups like escaping a space station on Mars!
From escaping an elaborate jail cell to breaking into a magician’s secret lair, escape rooms offer thrilling storylines and challenges that family members of all ages will love.
When starting the game, the gamemaster will brief you on the backstory, goal, and guidelines. Often you will have a mission like recovering lost treasure or evidence needed to solve a mystery. Then, you and your family will be let into the room to start searching for clues hidden in drawers, under furniture, behind paintings, and all over the scenery.
Are Escape Rooms Difficult?
The puzzles and clues require focus, logic, creativity, and teamwork to decode. You’ll need to find keys to open locks, interpret patterns, and solve riddles that reveal more clues or enable you to access new areas. It’s an exciting race against the clock! Easy rooms may have a 50% success rate for new players while hard rooms may have less than a 30% win rate on the first attempt.
Gamemasters monitor your progress from surveillance rooms and can offer hints over speakers if your family gets really stuck. When (and if!) your family escapes within the allotted time, you’ll feel an amazing sense of accomplishment. Even if you don’t get out, you’ll have bonded while working together to try your best.
Benefits of Family Escape Rooms
Beyond being exciting and entertaining, escape rooms offer many enriching benefits for families:
Promotes Teamwork and Communication
To be successful, all players need to communicate constantly, divide up tasks, balance roles, and share ideas, observations, and theories. You’ll need to practice listening, explaining yourself clearly, negotiating, and even compromising if there are disagreements. Working as a cohesive unit builds trust and relationships between family members.
Develops Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
Escape rooms aren’t easy – they require logic, analysis, and lateral thinking to decipher clues and interpret puzzles. You’ll need to use trial and error to test different solutions. Indeed problem solving is one of the best activities for teamwork so many businesses use escape rooms for this purpose.
When you get stuck, you’ll have to overcome dead ends and avoid getting side-tracked by “red herring” distractions planted in the room. Flexing your brain in these ways helps build critical problem-solving skills.
Provides an Immersive, Thrilling Experience
Escape rooms allow families to collectively transport themselves into an exciting fictional world for 60 minutes of fun. You’ll feel an adrenaline rush as you race against the clock, fueled by the eager motivation to beat the game. Successfully escaping the room makes you feel like the hero in an adventure movie!
Quality Bonding Time for Families
Phones and other distractions are not allowed into escape rooms, so you have everyone’s full attention. Families will have fun working towards a common goal and accomplishing it together. The shared positive experience increases family cohesion. You’ll make lasting memories and inside jokes that continue long after the escape room adventure.
Fosters Creativity and Out-of-the-Box Thinking
The unique puzzles in escape rooms often require innovative, outside-the-box solutions. You’ll need to tap into your imagination, learn to think creatively, and see the environment in new ways in order to unlock hidden clues. You may even need to get physical and move furniture around – anything goes when trying to escape!
Choosing Family-Friendly Escape Rooms
Picking the right escape room is key to ensuring a fun experience for the whole family. Here are some tips:
- Research the escape room options in your area and read about the themes and difficulty ratings. Look for beginner-friendly rooms with age recommendations suitable for your kids.
- For family bonding, avoid scary or explicit horror rooms. Opt for uplifting themes like exploring ancient tombs or magical fantasy worlds.
- Consider the interests of family members to select a theme everyone will be engaged by. Seek rooms with hands-on activities if you have fidgety kids.
- Ask about safety, room size, and how much gamemaster interaction is provided. Ensure the escape room can accommodate guests with handicaps or physical limitations if needed.
- Make reservations well in advance to get your desired time slot. Be sure the room size fits your group – anywhere from 4 to 8 players is ideal.
- Look for special family package deals or discounted rates for kids under 12. Escape rooms range from $25 to $45 per person nationwide. And the escape room market is booming.
- Research nearby food options so you can grab a fun meal together before or after your game time.
- Ensure the time commitment (60 minutes typically) aligns with your kids’ attention spans. Tweens may start to lose interest after 45 minutes.
With the right escape room for your family selected, you’re set for an engaging, entertaining time full of fun and bonding.
Making the Most of Your Experience
Use these strategies to maximize the fun and success during your family escape room adventure:
- Arrive 15 minutes early so you can get oriented before starting.
- Listen carefully during the gamemaster’s briefing about the story, rules, and tips.
- Quickly form a plan and assign roles based on each family member’s strengths.
- Start exploring the room systematically as soon as the timer starts. Send different players to scout various areas.
- Communicate constantly and stay organized. Shout out when you find clues to avoid duplicate searches. Playing together like this helps to foster a new culture of healthy family communication.
- Keep hypothesizing and trying different solutions when you get stuck. Ask the gamemaster for hints if you’re really struggling.
- Stay upbeat and encourage your teammates so no one gets frustrated and wants to give up.
- Have fun with the experience! Embrace the story and theme by getting into character.
- Take some goofy photos and selfies in the cool room environments. These make great mementos.
- Celebrate successes when you escape and share highlights and inside jokes over a fun family meal.
Following these tips will lead to an engaging, memorable family bonding experience and successful escape room adventure.
In A Nutshell
Escape rooms are a perfect place for some family together-time and bonding. They encourage teamwork and healthy communication. Escape rooms also help with developing creative thinking.
The settings are competitive, but only by working together as a family will success be made. And with the creative themes that game masters run, there is immersive entertainment for all ages.
