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People who run escape rooms, what's the weirdest thing you've seen people do?
- I worked at a facility that ran Escape rooms after hours. The place is huge with lots of corners to go hide around. The group would get debriefed on the rules before going down into the game. There was a strict "no kids under 18" rule unless they were with a parent. This one time, the first group to start that evening thought the rule was "no kids under 18" at all, and decided to bypass this by having their young son sneak down to the games to join them later. Problem was, there were four floors to the building and the kid managed to go to the wrong floor. Eventually the group confessed when they couldn't find their son after a half hour, then spent the rest of their time searching the entire building. The kid was crying in a corner somewhere on the 4th floor, and when he was found the group was permanently banned from the facility.
— sassymatty
- Ran a puzzle where the players had to offer a gift to an NPC/Actor. I am managing another player and turn around to find a guy has taken off all his clothes and is presenting himself as the gift. It was very hard not to break character because I wanted to laugh so hard.
Management met him at the end of the game and gifted him a pair of pants to a round of applause.
— JessaHawke
- Our friends did an escape room that involved starting off handcuffed to a thing. The guy running the room said once someone dislocated their thumb to slide their hand out of the cuffs.
There was a key hanging on a wall to unlock the handcuffs. It took our group of 6 like 20 minuets to find, and the guy who found it is legally blind. Not our best moment.
— costumefits
- I've worked at an escape room for about a year now. We have one room where there has been a theme with guest. We even warn them before the game starts not to do it, but no one ever listens.
In the room, you have three jars filled with paint water. It's only paint water to give it a cool color effect. All you have to do with them is place them on a scale in the right order.
Well, apparently some people think they need to DRINK the water to solve the puzzle. This has happened several times to the point where we glued the lid shut. That doesn't stop people from ripping it off and taking a sip. Then people get mad that "they drank that poison for nothing."
We warn them in the beginning not to drink anything in the room!!! Now because of these idiots, we have to get rid of the puzzle and create something new. So, for anyone wanting to go through an escape room, please don't drink anything in the room. It's not going to help you.
— Cosplaybaby29
- I don't run one but a friend of mine does. He told me there was a puzzle in one of their rooms that included a key that was attached to a large desk. They had a group that couldn't figure out how to get the key loose so they all grabbed a corner and picked the whole thing up. Then they carried it over to the lock, slid the key in and rotated the entire desk to open it.
— sharrrp
- I don't run an escape room but was chatting to the guy that was running one we'd just completed and asked pretty much this question. He told us about one guy who comes and plays the same room over and over but he comes with different people each time. He knows the room inside out so he can finish it in minutes which is really shit for his friend's as he just ploughs on through the puzzles. The chap said they hadn't called him out on it yet, but we all thought he should let the others know at the start as it ruins their experience.
— lurking_not_working
- Too many weird things have happened for me to remember them all but I'll list a few:
-We have a scary room and one time when I scared a guy he punched a hole right through one of our doors
-Someone also put my coworker in a headlock when they got scared
-There's a small door that opens in one of rooms and once I walked in and saw that a group had propped it open by stacking like 8 props/puzzles on top of each other
-I had a guy look straight at the camera and form a heart with his hands after I gave him a hint
-I had half of a group walk out after 20 min for a smoke break and then casually come back and resume
-Once I had a group that was 2 older couples and it was mainly the two women and one man who were solving puzzles. At one point I switched the cameras and saw the second man standing in the corner holding a whiteboard up to the camera with the word "HELP" on it
-I had a group that was a family with little kids and at one point the mom put a stool outside of the room and sent her kid for a time out for the rest of the hour
— ilalmtae
- A place I worked at had a bucket filled with "vomit" (oatmeal and water and food coloring) in one room, and you were supposed to reach in and grab a key from the bottom. There was also a working sink in the room and soap so you could wash your hands after doing this very gross thing, but people did all manner of stupid shit to avoid putting their hands in. They'd try to scoop it out with cups and pour it all in the sink (which clogged the sink), they'd try to break pipes off the wall to fish around inside it, and one group eventually tipped the whole thing over onto the floor during a really busy night and we had to ninja-clean it up. After that we chained the bucket to the wall, and people would run around looking for the key to unlock it so they could pour it out. I think we eventually took the oatmeal out so it was just water, and then people were a little more willing to reach in.
— yoloargentina
- I will preface this by saying large amounts of alcohol and escape rooms do not mix.
I had a bachelor/stag party come through and the main guy was so far gone that his friends were basically re-enacting “Weekend at Bernie’s”. The room they booked happened to be the one with a bed in it. They laid him down on the bed and he fell asleep for the entire game. I was surprised at how well they did considering.
Afterwards, we took a group photo and they held his head up just enough to get the photo. At that moment he threw up everywhere in the lobby. I was just glad he hadn’t done that in the room.
— wellroundedtool
- I’ve had a couple straight up just make out in front of the camera for the majority of the hour they had - which it doesn’t matter to me, I get paid either way, but I just didn’t understand why they paid $25 to just do that
I’ve also had a large group literally disassemble and destroy multiple pieces of furniture that had absolutely nothing hidden inside - after being told to treat the room like it’s their own home
— somethingslut
- My office just did an escape room. The toilet had a giant neon cover physically attached to it with the words NOT FUNCTIONING DO NOT USE.
Because someone in a previous escape room had sat on it and taken a massive shit in front of all of their coworkers.
— KeaOnAKeyboard
- A guy with a pretty noticeable limp came in with his family one day and we go through the rules with them and then put them in the room (it was a murder in a snowlodge theme). About 15 minutes later it turns out this guy smuggled in *a fucking fire axe* and seemingly stuck the handle down his trouser leg and had the axe head resting against his belly.
He starts hacking at the door. The manager calls 999 because there's a guy *armed with fireaxe in one of their rooms* the guy is escorted out by police after we take let them out and take his axe away.
I still wonder how that guy is doing these days
— WeeMentalChanka