“Your boss set you up. You have one hour to get out of this room, AND prove your innocence.” She closes the door. We hear the click of the lock.
I look around the room. There is a wardrobe in one corner, and under the window there’s a desk with a book, a phone and an old tea set on it. I look helplessly around the room at my co-workers. We’re all handcuffed to the wall.
It’s our staff night out, and the boss has not really set us up, but instead has treated us to an evening at Improbable Escapes. He is actually in the other room with the rest of the team trying to figure their own way out of whatever pickle they have gotten themselves into. My team (there are 5 of us) are playing the game called “The Office” and all we have been told is that we have been set up, and we have an hour before the police arrive. In that time, we must escape and prove our innocence. But first, we must unshackle ourselves from the walls.
It takes some time (and perhaps a small clue from the outside) but once we calm down, and observe our surroundings, we figure it out, and quickly unlock all of the handcuffs. We are then faced with a safe that we must crack the code for, hopefully our next clue is inside this safe.
Improbable Escapes opened up on Brock Street this summer, bringing the first real-life escape room game to Kingston. The idea is that people (ideally 2-6) are locked together in a room and have to use the elements of the room to solve a series of puzzles, find clues and escape the room within a set time. We have been told that our room has a 24% escape rate.
With another small nudge from our “co-worker on the outside who can only help a little bit as she is being watched by the boss” we crack the code and open the lock box, which gives us a key to unlock a door… leading us into yet another room. It appears that the FBI has been keeping an eye on our boss, but we are not out of the woods yet. We do manage to get out of this room, but as we are in what we believe to be our final room, our time is up. We didn’t escape, nor prove our innocence.
We gather with the rest of our team (they too were not successful in solving their game “The Great Escape”) but they had just as much fun and puzzlement as we did. We all are eager to return, and experience more of Improbable Escapes, but first we must head over to Sir John A’s pub for a well deserved pint, and discover that it’s wing night! And I may add, that they are some of the best wings I’ve had in Kingston.
If you’re looking for a fun, unique outing, I would highly recommend trying out Improbable Escapes, I’m planning on getting locked in with my family sometime soon.
