2. The Great Escape Room

Image © Great Escape Room

The premise of the Great Escape Room, which just opened last month in downtown Orlando, is simple but ingenious.

Locked in a room with up to nine other individuals, all must work together to scour the room – and all its contents, which, yes, could include dissembling a piece of furniture – to first uncover clues and then solve five puzzles. Think of it as a combination of scavenger hunt and riddle-solving (“Anything may be a clue,” the instructions state. “Search everywhere!”).

Once completed, you and your group are let out. If unsuccessful – well, you’re still allowed to leave, of course, but without your celebratory Facebook photo and bragging rights.

If it sounds overly simplistic or otherwise easy, think again; managers of the Escape Room say that their guests have been averaging somewhere around a 20% success rate thus far. Participants have said that the attraction, with its ticking clock and chalkboards full of frenzied notes and mathematical problems, elicits a level of intensity or, at times, outright panic that is hard, if not impossible, to find at other themed stops.

The Great Escape Room does, of course, have its limitations, mostly revolving around theming. Despite an opening recording by Sherlock Holmes explaining the challenge’s setup – that dastardly Moriarty seems to have tricked everyone into the locked room – there is no other indication that guests are in Victorian England, particularly with all the off-the-shelf props, including a Joker toy from the famed Batman mythos.

Image © Great Escape Room

Furthermore, and perhaps more critically, there is only the one room with the one set of puzzles for the time being, although there is talk of having expanded challenges sometime in the attraction’s second year of operation.

With that said, however, the premise is novel, the experience is rather unique – a major piece of praise in theming-heavy Orlando – and the potential for future expansions is almost infinite. It’s hard to not get excited about the Great Escape Room.

Tickets are approximately $29.99 per person, though there is a discount if you can manage to bring all 10 people together in the same party. Reservations are required. An expansion in Miami will open next month, with Washington, D.C. following sometime thereafter.