Starting a relationship
Teams large and small and families come to us constantly, but lately we have noticed a rise in bookings for two. As a game master it is easy to tell which pair is at the start of their relationship and which have been together longer, are more used to each other and know each other better. But the most interesting — and by far the easiest, practically instant, to spot — is always the first-date couple.
On the one hand it is flattering that two people choose us as the place to get to know each other; on the other, thinking about it, it is a fairly obvious choice. At the cinema you learn little about the other person beyond the fact that — in the better case — they can sit still for 90 minutes. A dinner with conversation is somewhat better, but during an active programme like an escape room, solving the puzzles together gives you a glimpse into your companion’s way of thinking in just 60 minutes. Not to mention that escape rooms, brainteasers and logic puzzles are immediately a shared interest, which brings a little extra connection right at the start of a relationship.
If we invite a hoped-for partner to an escape room for a first date and they say yes, we already know we are on something like the same wavelength.
Proposals
Indeed, there have been occasions when someone asked for their partner’s hand within one of our games. There can be a thousand reasons for that decision, and the one we have heard most often is also the most obvious: either the couple met in an escape room (in some cases it was their first date), or solving escape rooms became a shared passion during their relationship, making it a fitting setting in which to join their lives.
The most exciting of these occasions are always the ones where the bride-to-be has no idea what is coming, and we game masters have to hide the little ring box behind the room’s final padlock, cabinet or trapdoor before the game… Choosing the perfect spot can be a heavy responsibility in such cases, but judging by the feedback so far we have always managed it.
The task may sound simple, but there are cases that call for extra care and thought. One young man printed out their early, getting-to-know-each-other messages along with more recent romantic exchanges, and split them into eleven short notes. We had to hide these around the room so that after each solved puzzle she would find one — in chronological order, of course, so that the nostalgic stream of messages began with their first exchanges and culminated in the note containing the Big Question.
The ultimate escape-room proposal came at the very end of a Triple Magic World Marathon — with a ring hidden well in advance there too, of course. After three and a half hours of intense, exhausting puzzle-solving and battling a basilisk and other monsters, there could hardly have been a lovelier ending: she said YES!
