Theme parks thrive on the concept of bringing our wildest imaginations to life. More and more in recent years, the theme park experience has moved away from mere spectating to a new focus on fully immersing audiences in our favorite stories.
Universal embraced immersion masterfully in the way they connected Universal Studios Orlando’s Diagon Alley with Islands of Adventure’s Wizarding World of Harry Potter through a ride on the Hogwarts Express. Similarly, Walt Disney World’s Avatar: Flight of Passage could have been a simple simulator along the lines of Star Tours. Instead, Disney crafted a vivid experience where guests experience the full process of being paired with a Navi avatar on the lush world of Pandora. If Disney’s ambitious plans for Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge at Disney Hollywood Studios are any clue, theme park entertainment is heading truly exciting places.
What if audiences could go one step further, however? Through theme parks, we gain the opportunity to smell, taste, and bask in the fantastical. However, the adventures are still scripted. Even on a randomized ride like Star Tours, the core experience remains essentially the same. Disney has made commendable strides searching for the next evolution in theme park immersion through possibilities like virtual reality and “choose your adventure” style ride elements, but they still have a long way to go.
What if there were already a theme park-style attraction where audiences truly became characters in the story being told? What if the course of that attraction depended fully on guests’ choices, participation, and cleverness, to the point that every ride might prove different depending on those involved?
Such an experience does exist just a short drive away from the realms of Disney, Universal, and Sea World. Welcome to the fascinating world of Orlando’s escape games…
What are escape games?
Image: SparkFun Electronics – Conundrum Escape Room, (license), Link
If you are an avid traveler or adventure junkie, you might already be familiar with escape games. Games have steadily popped up across the country for the last five years, and their popularity is still going strong. The concept is simple: escape a locked room in one hour or less.
Most escape rooms surround a thrilling theme: solving a bank heist, stopping a terrorist plot, escaping a mummy’s tomb, or even locating a buried treasure. Horror themes are especially common, such as evading the clutches of a serial killer or the wrath of a haunted house. Each experience is broadly different, and while each new room helps hone your puzzle-solving skills, there is no telling what to expect in each adventure until the timer starts. Most games allow capacity for 2-8 people per game, and it is a regular practice that smaller parties might be paired with complete strangers.
Once your party is briefed and locked in the room (don’t worry, most rooms have a mechanism by which you can leave in an emergency), you have one hour to work together to find hidden clues and solve complex puzzles to escape. For example, your objective in one game might be to find the hidden treasure of Atlantis. To do that, you need to find a torch so you can see, discover a mysterious codex hidden in a pile of trash, and locate a key to open a treasure chest containing instructions for finding a secret passage out. Puzzles are layered upon puzzles and each problem solved usually leads to 2-3 more.
Image: Bob M ~, Flickr (license)
The puzzles usually increase in difficulty as you go, so don’t be fooled by the space you begin in. Almost every escape experience we have tried has included hidden passages and crawlspaces to reach new stages of the mission. If you ever played old point-and-click styles adventure games like Loom, Kings Quest, or Monkey Island, the escape game concept might seem familiar. Stepping into an escape room is like stepping into a living video game where you are the heroes (or victims) in a thrilling tale, and the mission will live or die on your choices.
The pressure is on…
Image: Airman 1st Class Tryphena Mayhugh, Wikimedia Commons (license)
Escape games work because they appeal to the very sense of immersion big parks like Disney and Universal work so hard to achieve for mass audiences—only, escape games can do this on a far more intimate level since they can carefully control guest numbers. The resulting experience is regularly described by first-timers as “the most fun they have ever had”.
We once found ourselves in an Indiana Jones-style escape room with a nice couple on vacation who signed up on a whim. The husband was a blue-collar workman who hated adventure games (indeed, he told me a hilarious story about having smashed a copy of the game, Myst, after he got frustrated with the puzzles). Not ten minutes into the escape game, this same man was tearing apart piles of rubble, poking at wall tiles, and working out complex computations with excitement to find the next clue.
Theme parks brilliantly emulate thrills and wonder, but there is one element of true adventure they cannot fully achieve. On a theme park ride, there are no true stakes. In the back of our minds, even on the most thrilling coaster, we know the ride is going to follow a scripted course. The Yeti isn’t actually going to get us. The elevator isn’t actually going to shatter when it hits the bottom. The dragon won’t actually reach us. We generally know how the story will end.
Escape games replicate the stakes of a real adventure through clever manipulation of challenges and motivations. Instead of just giving audiences an experience to enjoy, we are given a quest to complete, an objective that relies fully on our skills and choices. If you fail to solve the puzzles, you don’t get to see how the story ends. The same endorphins and adrenaline that video games fire in our brains are supercharged as we fully immerse in the adventure.
Unpredictable elements
Image: Breakout Basel, Flickr (license)
Escape games are regularly lauded as excellent team-building exercises for corporate and youth groups. If you are attempting the game with strangers, you are forced to get to know your fellow teammates very quickly. Even if you are somewhat awkward with social skills, this usually proves surprisingly easy since you have a common goal. Still, the element of human choice seriously amps up the tension in escape games in ways that most theme parks have not yet figured out how to replicate.
The escape game experience could easily be likened to spending an hour on a reality TV show. In popular shows like The Amazing Race, The Mole, or Survivor, contestants with deliberately varied backgrounds are forced to team up to complete challenges. Producers go out of their way to increase social tension in these situations to make good drama. The contestants either work together or they fail.
There is no predicting who might have what strengths or quirks when you enter an escape game. The math genius on your team might turn out to be scared of dark spaces, or your drama queen cousin might turn out to be brilliant with spatial reasoning puzzles. In the end, you get to know each other better, and the adventure experience feels all the more genuine even if things got stressful. For families and other teams, it is a great way to learn how to work together.
Why hasn’t Disney jumped on this bandwagon?
If escape game-style experiences are the next evolution in theme park entertainment, why haven’t major companies like Disney and Universal made their own? The answer is complicated.
Disney addicts might be surprised to learn that the Most Magical Place on Earth actually has experimented with escape games. Back in 2016, Disney Meetings launched their own Steampunk-themed escape challenge for corporate groups. As expected, they added a bit of their own flare to the experience with extra elements like actors involved in the story. It is unclear if Disney Meetings still offers their escape challenge, but it does give us a clue that Imagineers at least toyed with the concept.
The problem with escape rooms is that they can prove challenging to maintain. It’s a surprisingly frequent occurrence for guests to get over-eager to solve puzzles, to the point that they lose it and inadvertently break props and room elements that have nothing to do with the game (most escape game briefings will specifically point out items like this, such as not trying to unscrew power outlets or air conditioning vents). There is also a surprising issue of guest safety involved as people some do rather stupid things while under an encroaching deadline with a puzzle to solve—thus why all escape rooms usually require a waiver.
Image: Disney
Escape room owners can carefully manage the flow of guests through reservations to keep costs manageable, but with crowds like those drawn by Disney and Universal, the experience would have to be tweaked considerably to account for theme park levels of attendance. While it is possible Disney or Universal could transform the concept into a ride, it would not be as easy as simply inserting a themed escape room into the parks.
The more likely possibility for Disney and Universal to incorporate escape games into their resorts would be as an upcharge experience. Indeed, it is surprising that they have not explored this possibility further than the Disney Meetings experiment. A Disney-themed escape game could fit in well with their other VIP and special offering experiences, such as adding it as a reservation-based attraction in Disney Springs the same way they are promoting the “Star Wars: Secrets of the Empire” virtual reality attraction.
While it remains unclear if Disney or Universal will create their own escape games anytime soon, if you are planning of visiting Orlando, you don’t have to go far to try an escape room for yourself.
Orlando’s escape games
Image: Iain Cuthbertson, Flickr (license)
Orlando is an escape game fanatic’s heaven. Whether you long for the terror of being pursued by a zombie horde or the whimsical experience of a hunt for pirate treasure, there is a game for you. To make things even better, almost all of Orlando’s escape rooms are lauded with positive reviews.
Our favorite thus far has been The Escape Game Orlando, where games include a prison breakout, a hunt for lost gold, a heist, and even a mission to mars. America’s Escape Game is another possibility with games surrounding a White House crisis, a cursed mummy’s tomb, and the breakout of a pandemic. The Great Escape Room offers guests the opportunity to solve a Sherlock Holmes mystery, while Lockbusters claims to offer some of the most immersive escape experiences in town. Other options include Escapeology, The Escape Effect, Mindquest, and more. There are so many choices that you should start with whichever theme appeals to you the most.
There is no way to know if escape games might be the future of theme parks. However, they certainly hold some clues about the directions immersive entertainment might be heading. Have you ever tried an escape game? What was your experience like?
