Q&A for How to Plan an Escape Room

Doing more escape rooms can definitely be helpful! The first one will always be the hardest, because you have no idea what to expect or what you're looking for. But after you do the first one, the process starts to make more sense, and you can apply your experiences from past escape rooms to future rooms.

Make sure that you're communicating with everyone in your group and working together! Someone might find a puzzle piece or clue that you need for something later on, but if they don't communicate what they've found, it can slow everything down. Try not to overthink in an escape room, either—a lot of the puzzles are pretty straightforward. The simplest puzzles can actually catch people off guard, because people don't expect them to be as simple as they actually are.

Young kids usually want to solve things back to back and not have much downtime in between. So, it's definitely important to make the puzzles straightforward and easy to solve. For instance, the kids could all work together to find pieces of a puzzle that they then put together.

Outside because they might want to solve it themselves. You should give them all walkie talkies, and connect them to your talkie so they can tell you where they are, and you can give RM close.

You can use a zombie attack theme, a virus infection theme, a memory loss theme, a jungle theme, or away from city theme. You could also get creative and use a different theme.

Try setting something up outside. You could create boundaries that players aren't allowed to cross, just make sure your theme still suits the environment given.

Clean up, organize, and put things away where they belong. If you're just going to use one room, you only really need to clean that room.

You could have them all be in a locked dance area, and the owner forgets the passcode to open the door so people can leave the club.

You could do a virtual entrance and challenge visitors to unlock pages (calling them rooms). Prizes could be discounts to an offline download. They could even play with friends, requiring them all to sign up for your website (escape room). Or create a 3D scene allowing a multi-user pool to augment a scan-in feed/video (or something like that).

You can try to D.I.Y. some items that you already have, or make a digital online escape room.

Maybe have the goal be to find a buzzer (put the buzzer in a locked box), then the contestants have to find the pin to unlock the box.

Add boundaries and make sure you can watch the players so you know they’re not cheating.

You could make challenges with materials you already have, ask friends to borrow stuff, or simply tell your guests to use their imagination.

Of course you can. You just have to be creative about what you put into the room.

If you are willing to give away a large amount of money, sure!

Put it in a place that can see everything. That way you should have no problems.

It can be anything from candy to small trinkets, to money or a gift card. It all depends on your budget and what you think the participants might like to have.

Locked boxes are a good choice. If you have any, get tons of paper and write clues. Make the first one the easiest and go up to extremely hard until you grow tired of it. Make something for the last one that is the most fun.

A theme is very important. The props and costumes are not necessary, though they can go a long way toward the experience of the escape room.

Space is a good theme. For example, you could say they are locked in a spaceship, or on a strange planet. If on a planet, choose something like a cave, building, prison or quarantine zone to escape from.

Wix is an easy website to use, and you can upload pics and links on it. You can add patterns and colours as well.