Essentially, every escape room can line up a great many interesting stories, because anyone who takes up running an escape room has to face all sorts of things, from curious difficulties to unexpected oddities. In the next post we’ll pick out a few of these.
One of the most striking things about Időcsapda is that it sits inside a cellar system. By 2021 the nearly 400-square-metre cellar was fully in use, which means that from that year on all of our rooms have been at 17 Erzsébet körút. It wasn’t always this way. Our game masters often had to cover two or three locations at once, which sometimes made scheduling a real challenge. Besides being awkward to organise, it also gave guests plenty of opportunity to lose track of exactly where the game was. Happily that is now history, and we can welcome escaping teams comfortably at a single location.
17 Erzsébet körút — doorbell number 30
When a team arrives, in the better case they ring doorbell number 30. The game master answers and explains that you come through the door, turn right, and there you’ll find a large brown door with an Időcsapda sign on it. You come through that, then take the cellar stairs opposite — the spiral staircase mentioned above — down to the venue. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred this works; from the one time it doesn’t, some pleasantly funny anecdotes tend to emerge. The first mistake you can make on the way in is ringing flat number 3 instead of number 30. Luckily the residents there are very kind, and once they realise that a team of six probably doesn’t want to children’s party fight a basilisk in their living room, they point the way politely. Our thanks once again to the resident of flat 3.
Ringing doorbell 30 doesn’t guarantee you’ll make it down, but it’s an excellent start. The game master will also give you the directions you need, though anything can still get in the way. The number 4–6 tram or an ambulance siren can drown things out, and a small but crucial piece of information can be misheard or missed entirely. Teams burning to escape may reasonably think, “it can’t be that complicated, we’ll work it out”. Let me reassure everyone: most of the time they do. We try to sign and explain everything as clearly as possible. But by the law of large numbers, the odd team goes astray. When that happens, they find themselves stepping in surprise through the back entrance of the Turkish gyros place above us. Fortunately the gentleman who runs it — whose gyros is unmatched — is always very helpful and shows them the right way. From the spiral staircase on you can no longer get lost, and down in the cellar the game master helps with everything.
Our spiral staircase is rather narrow — but we have our very own Zastava!
The way down into the Időcsapda cellar leads along a narrow spiral staircase which, after refinishing and a full graffiti painting of the walls, looks better than it did when new. Once you reach the stairs, all you have to do is Harry Potter style follow the spiders… the painted ones on the wall, that is — but careful: while you’re admiring them, watch your feet too, so you don’t tumble down!
The spiral staircase does have one clear drawback: it is quite narrow, which makes bringing larger objects down rather difficult. And what sort of large objects does an escape room need? Wardrobes, cupboards, tables, an armchair and a sofa. With care — and decent skills at halving furniture and screwing or gluing it back together — all of that can be managed. But what we are proudest of is that our CSI Budapest – The Butcher room contains an almost complete Zastava. The Időcsapda team managed to bring very nearly a whole car down into the cellar (it may not sound like much of a challenge at first, but it really was). It happened, of course, rather like building with Lego: the body was cut into four pieces and then had to be welded back together in the cellar with engineering precision. This is what it looks like when creativity and the pursuit of the perfect set meet — and win.
The waiting room has been renewed!
Because of the covid crisis we felt it necessary to open a second waiting room, so that two teams would never have to wait in the same space. Here teams fill in a quick consent form, which is a condition of starting the game. The design of our waiting room was inspired by our Magic World rooms. There is a built-in swing and a small climbing frame for children, in case a team arrives early. It also makes a great spot for photos: the crests of Gryffindor, Slytherin, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw are all there, so everyone can take a team picture under their house of choice. Our game masters are always happy to help take the photo so that nobody is left out and it becomes a lasting memory.
That isn’t all, though. The room has a huge TV showing instructional videos that can come in handy during the game. Once you know the special padlocks, you can walk into the room with more confidence and rightly feel that nothing can stand in the way of your escape.
Team photos!
Everyone loves an experience, and we all like remembering time spent with friends and family. The world of escape rooms is no different. Most of the teams who come to us take photos together after the game — sometimes in one of the rooms, sometimes in the waiting area or the corridor. Do feel free to ask the game master for help getting the perfect group shot.
For teams who did especially well, or set a record or came close to one, we usually ask whether we may take a photo as well. That’s lovely for us, because it means we get to remember you after a great game too. If you achieved an outstanding result and you’re happy for us to, we also share your picture on our Facebook page along with your excellent result.
How dog-friendly Időcsapda is, what’s worth bringing with you to an escape room, and how much excitement even our toilet can hold — we’ll reveal these and similar secrets in our next post.
