Group interaction to escape clustered internment
Escape My Room is part of an entertainment trend that is starting to show up all over the globe. It began in Japan as a real-life version of a popular video game where players used puzzle-solving to escape a digital space. Andrew Preble, son of John Preble, the eccentric founder of the Abita Mystery House (see p.12), bumped into the escape-room movement by way of a Facebook post. He felt such an experience would be particularly fun in New Orleans when stirred with bizarre tales from the city’s rich and colorful history.
The adventure begins as you enter New Orleans’ main U.S. Post Office, a hideous 14-story monument to bad sixties brutalist architectural taste. On the fourth floor, you walk down a fluorescent-lit corridor past seemingly vacant offices to arrive at Suite 402. Inside is a different world, a cramped and musty 19th-century parlor filled with damask couches, threadbare drapes, and an odd collection of curios, like a diorama of Saint Louis Cemetery No. 1 and a rooster with a small alligator’s head.
Info
Address 701 Loyola Avenue, New Orleans, LA 70113, +1 504.475.7580, www.escapemyroom.com | Hours Daily 10am–11:30pm; tickets can be purchased on the website| Tip If you’re in New Orleans between Labor Day and November, another great place to be trapped is the Mortuary (4800 Canal St), a funeral-home-turned-haunted-house attraction that’s surrounded by graveyards. What makes it especially creepy is that as you make your way through the terror-filled maze, the staff has ways to separate you from your group so that you’ll turn around and suddenly find yourself all alone.
A hostess greets you and presents you with a form releasing them from any responsibility should you suffer harm or death. She then explains the rules. You and up to six other guests will be locked in a room next door for one hour. The group’s goal is to work together to dig through chests and drawers, looking closely at odd objects and using other means to find clues, open locked boxes, and solve puzzles that will lead you to discover the one way to get out of the room. (Apparently, only 30 percent of the groups succeed before the hour is up.) There’s a whole backstory about a fictional New Orleans family, the DeLaportes, and a search for their lost treasure. The voice of the hostess will occasionally come over a speaker to provide cryptic hints.
If you didn’t know your fellow participants beforehand, you certainly will after you either get out or are let out.
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