Stress-Inducing Room Escape Attraction Comes To Miami Beach
MIAMI (CBSMiami/AP) - Movies like "Saw" prey on people's fear of being locked in a room, struggling to solve puzzles to escape. The panic of confinement and finite time breeds heart-pounding stress. One group of entrepreneurs in Miami Beach have taken this formula and turned it into an attraction.
Real-life room escape attractions began opening nearly a decade ago in Asia and Eastern Europe, but have cropped up in North America over the past few years.
South Florida thrill seekers can now experience this new type of attraction at Escape the Quest in Miami Beach, which opened in July.
Escape the Quest, located on 1234 Washington Ave., gives groups of two to four an hour to solve a puzzle to win their freedom. The company offers two distinct games – Apartment 101 and Prison Escape. Yuliya Pashkevich, manager of the Miami Beach attraction, said they will introduce Mental Hospital soon.
David Fischer of the Associated Press gave the game a try.
Fischer was teamed up with three Russians in their mid-20s who had just moved to South Florida within the past two years– Alex Belousov, Konstantin Elizarov and Lucy Omelchenko.
Their English was heavily accented and as Fischer wrote, "my Russian is nonexistent, adding a language barrier to a challenge."
Fischer and his group were given Prison Escape to play. The four were paired off, with each pair in a separate room.
The goal was to not only escape with their partner, who was handcuffed to them, but to also meet up with the other team and escape together.
Fischer recalled "Alex (Belousov ) and I did eventually find a handcuff key, probably much later than we should have."
Eventually with Fischer and Belousov's help, Elizarov and Omelchenko made it to Fischer's room.
In the third phase of the game the group was prompted with a math riddle, that if solved would ensure their escape. With just five minutes to spare, the team was free.
Pashkevich said that only about 20 percent actually complete the challenge.
The challenges start at $60 a group and were designed to appeal to people of all ages and backgrounds, Pashkevich said. Though groups of friends are the norm, Pashkevich said it's also common to host families and even co-workers using it for team-building. But she added the potentially stressful room escapes can be poison to a budding romance.
"You know when it doesn't work?" Pashkevich said. "On a first date."
While room escape attractions are more stressful than actually scary, they're catching the attention of more traditional haunted house operators and theme parks.
Brett Hays, a board member of the Haunted Attraction Association and director of Fear Fair in Indiana, said he expects room escapes to feature prominently at a national trade show in St. Louis next spring.
"You're going to see a lot of overlap, where companies and individuals doing haunted attractions are also going to be doing these types of events in the off season," Hays said, adding that room escapes can be popular year-round, not just around Halloween.
The challenge of room escape attractions is volume. Small groups of two to four using up an hour to escape just won't cut it on a large scale operation.
"You have to get a lot of people through in a night to make the finances work," Hays said.
Hays noted traditional haunted attractions often feature multiple events, so escape rooms could fit in as a side attraction to alleviate this issue.
Dennis Speigel, president of International Theme Park Services, Inc., believes the room escape concept can be modified to accommodate more participants.
"We see it as something that will come into the parks big time," Speigel said. "It will come in on a larger scale. You'll have large teams of people coursing through different games."
Theme parks are always looking for new ideas, Speigel said, and the critical thinking and interactivity featured in room escapes is appealing.
"The concept is limitless to the story," Speigel said. "So as long you have creative people, this can go on forever."
(TM and © Copyright 2014 CBS Radio Inc. and its relevant subsidiaries. CBS RADIO and EYE Logo TM and Copyright 2014 CBS Broadcasting Inc. Used under license. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
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