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30 Hilarious, Stupid And Just ‘What The Heck’ Moments Escape Room Staff Have Witnessed People Do
Article created by: Monika Pašukonytė
Everyone likes going on adventures because they’re so fun and challenging. In our regular day-to-day lives, it’s not really possible to just go out on a quest at a whim, which is why we have to make it happen.
Escape rooms have solved that problem and made it possible for people to participate in mysteries, work through tough puzzles, and go on cool escapades while still being in a safe place. People try different strategies to get out, and some of their techniques have made an impression on employees. Here are their stories.
More info: Reddit
- Read More: 41 Hilarious, Stupid And Just ‘What The Heck’ Moments Escape Room Staff Have Witnessed People Do
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#1
This was our group, we were having trouble with the last puzzle to get out which in involved pressing multiple buttons, we couldn’t figure out the sequences and finally asked for a hint. The employee just said “all together” so now instead of pushing all the buttons at the same time we all put our hands on the doorknob assuming the power of friendship was what was needed to get out. The employee just went “no the buttons” cue helpless embarrassed laughter for the next half hour.
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#2
Something my group did. The scenario of the room was we were captured and they had us all handcuffed to a cot in the room. We could move around a little bit with the chain attached to the cuffs and since it was a small room with a light on the desk we could grab most of the puzzles and bring it to the cot. We solved a lot of the puzzles still not finding the key to the cuffs to get free. With only a small desk lamp for light it was hard to see most of the writing but we made do and continued to solve things. About 20 minutes of solving things still cuffed to the cot the GM sends us a message saying "You know you can turn on the lights" next to the door was a light switch and after turning on the room lights on the black wall right next to us was a black key hanging on a nail...the key to the cuffs. We escaped the room shortly after that.
#3
Some dude tried to jam a small iron bar into an electrical socket.
Not sure if he was trying to escape the room, or life in general.
My collegue managed to get to the main electrical switch before the idiot could elektrocute himself.
#4
Someone else posted this story where at some point you find a screwdriver, the point was to unscrew a clock you found previously to get a key, instead one guy started taking apart all the furniture, started unscrewing fixtures off the wall, he was a little bit over zealous.
#5
I did the stupidest thing I've heard of. There was a row of chairs, just regular chairs you might see at a conference. I noticed that only one of them had the label with a barcode and serial number stuck to the bottom so I assumed it was intentional and started trying to apply the 10+ digit serial number to everything in the room. The game master told me I wasn't the first one. Makes me wonder why they didn't just remove the label like they did on the other chairs..
#6
On the flip side, this reminded me of the stupidest puzzle I ever did. The theme of the room was to make as much money as possible by “stealing” fake cash, gold, sports memorabilia, etc. before you escaped the room. At one point there was a huge fake diamond raised on a stand in a clear plastic box with small holes in the side, and a larger hole at the top. Earlier in the puzzle there was a box we unlocked that contained sticks, the idea was to put the sticks through the small holes and use them to carefully lift the diamond out of the box through the hole at the top. If you dropped it, you wouldn’t be able to pick it up again. I just reached through the hole in the top and grabbed the diamond by hand. The hole was way too big and the box way too short. One of my buddies got mad saying I was cheating, I defaulted back to my 6th grade math teacher’s motto: “work smarter, not harder.”.
#7
To repeat what ive said in this sort of thread before:
If it would take an apathetic employee more than 5-10minutes to reset, then *no* it is not the solution (no kicking a hole in the drywall wont reveal a special chest unless you paid a heck of a lot for your hour and there is a freshly plastered and painted patch of wall right at shin height).
#8
My ex-family owned an escape room, and one of their rooms had a old fashioned tape recorder. After only one group they had to remove it as no one knew how to put in the tape and press play. The group were in their 20s. Its crazy to think such a simple device can be so hard to use.
Also, off subject, I work at a cellphone store. We had an old rotary for display. a late teen picked it up and asked, "How can you even walk around with this? and where is the screen?" thinking it was a cellphone.
Lil be lil 6 months ago
I'm thinking of walking around with an old rotary phone so I can slam the receiver down when I hang up on someone!
#9
Posted this in an older thread:
I worked in an escape game that ran out of a historic castle-esque landmark in Toronto. Because we were set up in a tourist attraction, there was some stuff in the room that we couldn't get rid of that needed to be there (light switches, fire alarms, etc.). So what we did is we just put stickers on everything that wasn't "part of the game". The stickers were bright red, and depicted a hand with a cross through it (i.e. Do Not Touch)
We would always give players a short spiel in the lobby at the start where we would tell them the rules, and every time we would show them the sticker and say "if you see this, it means the thing is not part of the game, but rather a real functioning thing, it will not do anything in the game, please do not touch." We never had a problem with it until one day....
Bachelor party comes in all happy and a little tipsy (nothing too bad). We give them the spiel, they seem nice and eager, and we take them into the Tower where the game space is located. They enter the tower, the door shuts behind them, and the warning goes off that their time has begun.
Literally as the first thing that happens, maybe two seconds after time starts, one of the dudes bee-lines towards the fire alarm plastered with a bright red Do Not Touch sticker and pulls it.
There was a function going on at the attraction that evening too, and the whole castle had to be evacuated. Five fire trucks came.
#10
So many things.
One thing that really got me though-- They are all given blacklight flashlights at the beginning of the game. At one point, there was a case full of books that they eventually find a key for. The trick was that they all had secret messages within that lit up with the black lights.
They did not use the black lights. Instead... they thought they were supposed to READ THE BOOKS. Like... start to finish. There were at least 15 full books in the case. At this point they had about 35 minutes (out of an hour) to escape. They all just laid down and read the books for at least 20 minutes before they asked for a clue.
#11
Did one with friends before where you start in a small room and gradually oven the other rooms.
The first room you assemble a doorknob to get out.
Later a few of us went back in to put a backlight we found around the room for numbers
The door closed behind us and we realised one of us dismantled the doorknob and took it out of the room to check for other hidden doors.
Calling the guy on the walkie talkie to explain we were trapped was a little confusing he said "thats the point "
He came up and dismantled the lock we were the first people to get trapped this way.
#12
I didn’t work at one but I seen someone fall through the ceiling while me and my friends were in the waiting room.
They really stressed that you shouldn’t enter the ceiling to try to escape after that.
#13
My brother owns some escape rooms, so this story is from him. In one of the rooms is a sink, and down the drain is a key (the drain comes approx 6-7” below the sink). There is a magnet on a stick in the room you are supposed to find to retrieve the key. Instead one guy RIPPED THE SINK OFF THE WALL to get the key out instead.
People are intelligent y’all.
#14
We have some windows in our rooms; with obvious labels saying "Please don't open window"
...... but when we get the drunks.... yes.... at least once a month we'll get one drunk person who ignores the label and tries climbing out the window.
#15
Not an employee but a participant
My group went to a pirate ship themed escape room. One of the puzzles involved pressing lit up labeled buttons on a wall in a particular sequence to unlock a door. A common theme (to me) in this room was water. There were exposed water pipes that had cartoonish signs on them reading "do not touch", and one of the lights on the wall read "water" and the light behind it was out. I had to have fixated on this for a good 30 minutes; I tried unscrewing parts of the water pipes, pressing the water button while trying to open parts of the pipe, everything. After we finally moved on and finished the GM told us that the room had nothing to do with water, I was actually just messing with their water system.
#16
One of the benefits of going to new escape rooms is listening to the opening spiel about what you can't do in the room. I think my first ever escape room, the the operator specifically told us we couldn't pull off the electrical outlet covers. I figured someone had been watching too much Breaking Bad.
#17
My big brother works at an escape room
the room the people were in was quite large and full of stuff but only few hints to get through
they talked for a bit and then nodded and went around the place and threw everything in the center of the room and when they were done they were done with throwing the went to the pile and looked through and they found the hints effective but messy
my brother said it was annoying to clean it up there was so much stuff.
#18
Escape Room employee here! The owner of our competitors came in and did our most difficult room. We warned him that it was a tough one but he just shrugged us off with "I'm good with these". Well when the time was up, we went into the room and noticed that every single padlock and combination lock was off. Weirdly, the easier puzzles were left unsolved. When asked about it, he complained that this room was too difficult and that he had picked the locks. Which of course in our rooms, messes up the order of the puzzles. He then complained to management about the room. We just shook our heads and wondered how they handled things at his escape room...
#19
Had a group of engineers from Google doing a room, and this guy tried using trigonometry to solve a puzzle.
#20
This is my personal favorite when I'm running a room:
The puzzle: You find a pair of glasses and a folder with a small rectangle cut out of it. You put the glasses on and the previously plain white TV screen now reveals a list of Cites. Place the folder on the screen and the one important city is written the cut out gap.
What every single team always does: Puts the glasses on and then looks around the room with the folder pressed to their face, peeking through the gap in the folder.
It's a void, cut out hole. There's no filter, no lenses, you could stick your finger through the hope and wiggle it round, holding it to your face won't help you.
#21
An employee of an escape room told me this one.
The room was in English, but one of the guys was Italian and for some unknown reason couldn't communicate that he wanted to go to the toilet beforehand. So they go into the room, there is a bucket there that is supposed to be used as a clue, but this madman waits while the lights are still off (horror based room) and PEES IN THE BUCKET! And because the bucket was in a camera dead-zone and there was a sponge in it, they found out after the room was over.
#22
Not an employee, but I have a group of friends that I do esscape rooms with a lot.
On one room, at some point you found a few ping-pong balls and rackets. Two of us cleared a table and started playing while the other two looked at us like we were out of our minds.
#23
I just assume any non-common rules given at the beginning are because some idiot has already done it.
Don't jump out the two-story window. Don't eat or drink anything that you find. Don't try to climb into the ceiling. Don't touch anything with an orange sticker (which turns out to be 80% of the room including electrical sockets).
#24
We went to one in Ottawa Ontario where there was, among other things, a landscape painting hung on the wall upside-down. The five of us spent a significant amount of time trying to work out what the painting meant for us, because it was clearly intentional. Wasted most of our time, didn't solve the room, and when the employee came in we asked him to walk us through the rest of the puzzle. He didn't even reference the painting, so I asked him about it. Apparently, despite being told not to remove the painting from the wall (as we were) the previous group had removed it and left it on the floor. When the employee went to reset the room for us, he didn't notice he had hung it inverted.
I believe that was the same place that required us to open a type of padlock we'd never seen before, with a sort of joystick in the middle that you slide up, down, left or right. We thought we knew the combination for sure, but the stupid thing wouldn't open. We had to call the guy in to ask what the real combination was so we could progress. He said we had the combo, then sat down on the floor to open it for us (it was on a short cabinet, he wasn't just lazy). Took him like 4 tries to get it open.
#25
I went with a group of 10. First room, we solved all the mini puzzles, but we couldn't figure out the letter combination lock. There were words written on the wall so we started trying them. We couldn't get it...so eventually my friends were like...hey, this window opens and there is a key against the other wall. Maybe we're supposed to grab that key. So we used a fishing pole to try and grab it, but it was too far. Next thing I know, a guy lifted me up and pushed me through the window. And in doing so, the fake wall broke. They let us finish and we had the second lowest time for completing it, but we got a stern talking to about not going through windows. And they told us that in the first room, we had to press a button on a flashlight twice and it turns into a black light and the combination was written next to the door.
#26
Lots of things can be credited to nerves, first time, or just "whoops" moments.
I've had two groups now that immediately try every code they find on the door they entered from. Would you really be happy if the first code you found let you escaped? Seems like a waste of money to me, but hey, you guys do you.
#27
Something my group did. At the very beginning, we were supposed to find 2 keys to get through a door. We found one of the keys hidden behind a picture, but we could not find the second one at all. Instead of calling the employees for help, we used the same key for both locks to get through...
#28
Not an employee, but once when I was leaving, I looked up to see someone's upper half hanging out the window and he was shouting "ALMOST OUT!" - to this day I wonder if that guy was alright afterwards. I just don't think he got the whole idea of an escape room...
#29
Said clearly during the rules, that anything with a DO NOT TOUCH STICKER was NOT to be touched. Said sticker was on a electrical outlet.
“I’m so smarter then the rest of you” person decides the best place to put the key was in?....
The electrical outlet.
#30
Not an employee, but I once tried to use a magnetized tool behind the camera they were using to watch me because I thought there was a key there. Even the game maker was confused.
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