Last weekend, my friends and I had the opportunity to test our problem skills in Tucson’s first live room escape game. The game was good, our skills were not.
Nicolette Cusick, who runs the operation on her own, opened Will You Escape? in February. She heard about the concept in August, visited a few live escape rooms in other states and thought Tucson would love it as much as she did. Cusick invited us to play after I posted about her website back in January.
Participants enter the room, which Cusick furnished as a ’50s movie star’s dressing room from thrift store finds. Cusick explains the story: There was an actress, she’s been killed and you have to solve the murder (person, method, time) in under an hour. Otherwise, the murderer comes back and he’s gonna get ya.
There are so many locks. So. Many. Locks. You have to use clues hidden all throughout the room to find the combinations. There’s no polite way to go about it, you’re going to leave that room a mess.
Thankfully, Cusick is there if you need some assistance. She’s watching as you move through the room. If she decides you need help (we needed so much help) an alarm sounds and she has a clue waiting for you on a screen. While you’re busy being thankful for the assistance, Cusick is simply enjoying the show.
“I’ve seen families go through, couples, complete strangers—it is a blast to see the way they work together,” she said. “I’ve seen a 13 year old become the boss of the entire family an the dad take the back seat. It’s fun to see who works well together, who communicates and who is just chaotic.”
The clues are primarily number based, and you can lose ’em as soon as you’ve used ’em. That’s really the one criticism I heard from the group after we left. Did the story really matter? Was there a clear motive? If there was, none one remembered it.
Now, this is the first escape room I’ve been in—I don’t know how they typically work. But I couldn’t help but feel a little disappointed when we opened the last lock and the answer was just waiting for us inside. This game is less about solving a mystery than it is about identifying and applying clues. It’s fair to say room is there to build teamwork and test problem solving skills—it won’t satiate any need to try your hand as a police detective.
But, that kind of makes sense with the nature of the game. I don’t think we we’re in any condition to think back and piece together the mystery from clues we discovered at the beginning of the hour.
Our group finished with about a minute left on the clock. Cusick claims she didn’t have to give us too many clues (she’s clearly lying, none of us should be detectives), but it was fun for me to watch her clues go from vague, carefully typed hints to all caps instructions that were probably accompanied by heavy sighs and a few “they’re never gonna make it”‘s. I learned that my “team problem solving skills” are actually just celebrating other people’s discoveries.
Cusick who, again, runs this show by herself, says she’s keeping it to one room. “I definitely think there is a demand once people understand the concept,” she said noting she’ll probably give the room she has six months before changing it up. “I just want to go into this slowly and not try to expand too quickly.”
If she does end up building another room, our group will definitely be back.
The best time so far is a truly astonishing 31 minutes. So, book your own game and let me know if (and, my god, how) you beat that time.
This article appears in Mar 5-11, 2015.
Our group had a really great time getting out of the room. I believe we had 11 minutes left but we definitely had some help! Try it, it is fun!
They’re offering a discount this weekend! Check it out on their Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/willyouescape
The game itself was fun, but the owner was very condescending. Her overall attitude was off-putting from the get go, but one specific situation, accompanied by a less than needed or wanted attitude really put the experience over the edge in a negative way. Prior to entering the room it says you can not take personal items such as electronics into the room. I had my water in my pocket as I walked into the room and instead of nicely asking me to place it in a locker and simply saying it could compromise the game, the owner just rips it out of my back pocket and doesn’t say a word…. I explained to her that my medications give me chronic dry mouth and she told me, “too bad.” Additionally, if I had to leave the room to get a drink that I would forfeit the game for everyone and of course that meant no refunds for all 7 of us. Yet, it was perfectly okay for the employee who sits in the enclosed room with us to puff on his Vape throughout the entire hour. Needless to say, I was disgusted by her rudeness and lack of consideration. I will NEVER ever go back to this place, however I would go back to an escape the room scenario managed by someone other than the owner at this facility. Based on the other reviews, maybe she was just having a bad day, but she definitely ruined my experience.