“We now have a zero percent escape rate with criminals,”

July 15, 2018 5:04 AM

Burglar breaks into “escape room” business, panics, and calls 911. [Ars Technica] “A burglar in Vancouver, Washington, made four panicked 911 calls after breaking into an "escape room" business last weekend—and having trouble getting out. Escape rooms are timed challenges that let groups of customers test their wits against a series of intricate puzzles. But NW Escape Experience's three escape rooms apparently so unnerved accused burglar Rye Wardlaw that he called 911 on himself.”
posted by Fizz (58 comments total)

They should have broken in with an additional 3-5 people for a small room, 5-9 for a large. That’s 101-level planning.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:13 AM on July 15, 2018 [39 favorites]

Fizz thank you for this post.

I just laughed so hard I cried and this has literally brightened my entire day.
posted by Faintdreams at 5:25 AM on July 15, 2018 [9 favorites]

So I take it he's not DB Cooper then?
posted by arcticseal at 5:53 AM on July 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

I can see this being turned into a movie. Two hapless and incompetent criminals break into the escape room trying to flee the cops after a botched up robbery (the escape room is actually a huge mansion designed to looked derelict). Meanwhile, the escape room owner and his kids are about to close for the day when they realize what's going on. The family decides to fight back against the burglars by tricking them into thinking they have entered an actual haunted house. And who is the owner of this escape room called ALONE? An adult Kevin McCallister. Escape From Alone coming to theaters this fall.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:53 AM on July 15, 2018 [81 favorites]

See also this story from last year.
posted by dng at 6:02 AM on July 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

So I take it he's not DB Cooper then?

This is Cooper's distant relation with the hyphenated name, DB Cooped-Up.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:07 AM on July 15, 2018 [14 favorites]

A whole new meaning to the phrase "the call is coming from inside the house!"
posted by chavenet at 6:31 AM on July 15, 2018 [12 favorites]

Escape rooms weren't invented yet but this is definitely a Goosebumps plot.
posted by dilaudid at 8:01 AM on July 15, 2018 [6 favorites]

That serial killer room would be pretty disturbing if you didn't know it was staged.
posted by doctornemo at 8:05 AM on July 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

When I was in third grade my elemetary school turned one of its classrooms into a multi-level cardboard maze for Halloween and I got stuck and completely paniced, compelling the staff to extract me by cutting up a section of the maze, so I sympathize with the hapless criminal in this case.
posted by cj_ at 8:09 AM on July 15, 2018 [35 favorites]

I find the serial killer room disturbing because it was staged. Whats next? "Showers at Auschwitz" room?
posted by Pembquist at 8:24 AM on July 15, 2018 [4 favorites]

I doubt there will be an auschwitz or dachau room anytime soon, though if someone were to establish a Nordic larp with the proper consent and safeguards and ethical concerns met I would be okay with that.

As far as a kill room, yeah it’s pretty tasteless and they could have probably made an “alien abduction autopsy” room that would be just as scary with the right level of camp without all the green river killer baggage.
posted by nikaspark at 8:43 AM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

Well, there isn't a large body of pop culture involving people being trapped inside Auschwitz and having to escape before they turn the gas on
posted by Merus at 8:43 AM on July 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

Mod note: For my sake if nothing else let's drop the "what if Holocaust escape room?" thing entiiiiiirely starting like yesterday.
posted by cortex (staff) at 9:03 AM on July 15, 2018 [55 favorites]

I've never been to one of these escape rooms and I have no intention of ever signing up for it. The idea of willingly giving money to be put in a trapped room, to be caged, even if its filled with fun puzzles, it just freaks me out too much. It gives someone else too much power and yes, I'm sure there's some kind of fail-safe word or buzzer you can push in an emergency but if someone isn't paying attention or something stupid breaks, sorry my brain is too anxious and paranoid about stuff like that.
posted by Fizz at 9:03 AM on July 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

Fizz, don't worry. You're never actually trapped in an escape room. The door is unlocked and you can leave at any time. Of course, that means you forfeit and lose the game. Typically there's the door by which you entered, which remains unlocked as an emergency exit, and a final door which you must unlock in order to win. My wife and I love escape rooms; we just did one yesterday as part of our anniversary celebrations. We found the pirate treasure and escaped from Blackbeard's cabin with minutes to spare.

And I'm not sure why the serial killer room theme is bothering people. If you have an over-arcing objection to serial killers being used as a theme in entertainment fiction, I'll respect that, but otherwise I don't see why this is any worse than Dexter.
posted by Faint of Butt at 9:10 AM on July 15, 2018 [10 favorites]

That's good to hear FoB, I guess I'm overthinking it in my anxious brain per usual. Still the idea, it just unsettles me.
posted by Fizz at 9:11 AM on July 15, 2018

If you're gonna do an escape room, make sure you visit the loo first.
posted by Sphinx at 9:42 AM on July 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

I hope the company is using this event as publicity.
posted by bile and syntax at 10:07 AM on July 15, 2018

The article says he wasn't trapped; he called from the lobby. It was pretty stand up of him to report a serial killer, likely knowing he would be arrested himself.
posted by starfishprime at 10:11 AM on July 15, 2018 [6 favorites]

Are we sure this isn't an episode of Nathan for You?
posted by Gable Oak at 10:24 AM on July 15, 2018

And I'm not sure why the serial killer room theme is bothering people.

Serial killers were so overdone from 1980-2000, they should be banned from entertainment until 2250 or so. Obviously, they should also be banned from real life.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:32 AM on July 15, 2018 [11 favorites]

I did a few escape rooms for work, and to my embarrassment I had to lie on the floor in a panic induced meltdown convinced we would die in there around the 40 minute mark. Despite the front door being unlocked and the omnipresent helper watching us on camera.

I was super chill the second time it happened and pretended I was looking under the table for clues with my eyes closed and counting to 100 breathing deeply.

Years later we still keep up the polite fiction that I’m in the closet at work with my anxiety disorder.

So this headline was completely relatable to me.
posted by politikitty at 10:32 AM on July 15, 2018 [27 favorites]

As a die-hard fan of escape room games, I desperately want to try one of these, but I am skeptical that they can recreate the essential experience of systematically combining the items in your inventory one by one, and then patiently using them on every clickable item in the room, because you have no clue what the fuck to do.
posted by brook horse at 11:02 AM on July 15, 2018 [40 favorites]

When you win an escape room, is there a prize? Like, do you get some tickets you can exchange for erasers or little toy cars?
posted by meese at 11:07 AM on July 15, 2018 [5 favorites]

This happened next door to the salon where I get my hair cut (it’s a shitty strip mall in Vancouver, WA) and seeing this little Escape Room business in a run down part of town always made me happy. When I saw this story it filled me with delight. The would-be burglar destroyed a lot of the business these folks had worked really hard on, so fuck this criminal extra for that. I hope the escape room gets a lot of business from this story at least.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 11:11 AM on July 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

When you win an escape room, is there a prize? Like, do you get some tickets you can exchange for erasers or little toy cars?

A souvenir photo of your victorious (or failure-ridden) team is the customary takeaway.
posted by Faint of Butt at 11:12 AM on July 15, 2018 [3 favorites]

I did one of these with coworkers. It was fun, and we were allowed to leave via emergency exit for bathroom breaks if we needed to.

Having played all the Zero Escape games,
though, the hardest part was resisting the temptation to order everyone around so as to solve the puzzles faster. That would not be so great for team-building.
posted by asperity at 11:21 AM on July 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

My friend just helped set one of these up at her museum. The only hitch so far has been making sure people don't completely dismantle the antique furniture used for ambiance in an attempt to find clues hidden inside.
posted by PussKillian at 1:39 PM on July 15, 2018 [7 favorites]

the hardest part was resisting the temptation to order everyone around so as to solve the puzzles faster.

this is indeed the hardest part.
posted by corb at 2:04 PM on July 15, 2018 [5 favorites]

I know what escape rooms are but have never done one. I would consider a "serial killer" room to be in incredibly poor taste to have, if only because I know people who've done them for workplace events. References to murder on the same level as a Poirot novel, probably fine, sure. Fake blood? A dead body? Jesus.
posted by Sequence at 2:06 PM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

I just asked my wife if she knew what an escape room was... and she told me that one had just opened up across town. More importantly, she recommended it to a friend (in jest) that has a few out of town guests coming in for an event that they were slightly less thrilled to have but still have to entertain...

She burst out laughing and sent this article to her friend...
posted by Nanukthedog at 2:17 PM on July 15, 2018

So this guy broke in without knowing what the exact business was and was so disturbed by what he found there, that he put aside concern for his own freedom and called police from the lobby...when he could have just high tailed it out of there and said nothing. He's got a conscience and we're making fun of him. Yay us.
posted by bonobothegreat at 2:43 PM on July 15, 2018 [7 favorites]

"the jig goes up, but now it's late, retrieved for the bounty, never more to go astray, in place that sells delay for a wanted man"
posted by clavdivs at 2:56 PM on July 15, 2018

Humans of Late Capitalism indeed.
posted by JohnFromGR at 3:03 PM on July 15, 2018

I laughed like a hyena the first time I saw this cartoon. That is honestly my first instinct regarding escape rooms.
posted by adept256 at 3:53 PM on July 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

Back when I was a junior in high school, we had to write a very formal compare and contrast paper. Personally, I felt like this was something we had been asked to do repeatedly and it felt like a cop out of an assignment. So i wrote two papers: one was forgettable, but met the 800 word requirement. The other, I spell and grammar checked carefully (this was before automated features in word processors) and submitted it on top of the other paper. I told no-one, and said nothing to anyone. When papers were returned the next week, Mr. Sala called it out, particularly my dry witt, and recommended I continue to read Dave Barry because (I already read him and) i could produce a reliable humorous 800 words on a given topic. My class got a laugh out of my topic and - once again I forgot about it.

A month or so later, parent teacher conferences took place. My parents were involved, so they toured all my teachers and, Mr. Sala had made them a copy and gave it to them there. There was eye rolling, standard parental embarrassment, and my teacher telling them that I did a good job. But, he gave my mom the copy... who... I would add... apparently sped home in order to discuss my compare and contrast paper.

I'll now give you the title, and the first few sentences from my paper... and then explain the connection to this article...
---
COMPARE AND CONTRAST: MY MOM AND A PSYCHOTIC SERIAL KILLER

There is no difference between my mom and a psychotic serial killer. She has the remains of seven bodies in our basement along with the laundry....
---

So. Needless to say, my first paper was a solid joke, but as I read this, and all in could think: they have a room that looked like our basement growing up?

I sent the link to my mom and asked her if she had sent pictures of our basement for advice... and even... what... 27 years later she knew exactly what i was referring to.
posted by Nanukthedog at 4:10 PM on July 15, 2018 [4 favorites]

"This is Cooper's distant relation with the hyphenated name, DB Cooped-Up."
Boo, I say. Boo! (Yet I laugh)
posted by AJScease at 6:07 PM on July 15, 2018

So this guy broke in... He's got a conscience and we're making fun of him.

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm
posted by Merus at 6:17 PM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

It seems like there are two markets for most escape rooms - either horror themes (zombies, serial killers) or kid-friendly themes (pirates). I can highly recommend Escape My Room in New Orleans for people who are not particularly interested in either. This was my first escape room experience and I think like a lot of puzzle-lovers I was pretty skeptical but they really scratched an itch even if they did make me a bit bossy.
posted by muddgirl at 6:20 PM on July 15, 2018 [1 favorite]

I've seen much wider themes than that - historical ones tend to be popular because you can justify having lots of fiddly keys around, sci-fi lets you have cool puzzles, and I've seen a few fantasy/literary ones because the people building them are nerds. I've also seen espionage-themed ones, which generally lean on the conventions of the genre and have people try and stop a bomb or an assassination or something, and in the process of doing that, you unlock the way out.
posted by Merus at 6:35 PM on July 15, 2018 [2 favorites]

I did the escape room thing once, with 3 other people. Within a minute, the watcher/helper began feeding us small clues. At that point, I lost all interest but kept playing along to be a good sport. The way I saw it, once you've been helped, you've failed.
posted by davebush at 7:11 PM on July 15, 2018

I did not intend to imply that there are only two kinds of escape rooms. But when I was looking for escape rooms it seemed like 2 out of 3 companies had horror or sci-fi/horror themed rooms for adults, and other rooms intended to be easier for children.
posted by muddgirl at 7:33 PM on July 15, 2018

I am laughing so hard at this, in public. Thank you for this. I think.
posted by greermahoney at 7:44 PM on July 15, 2018

I guess what I'm trying to imply is that Serial Killer themed rooms are not uncommon at all - I have seen one in many towns - so there must be a market for it.
posted by muddgirl at 7:47 PM on July 15, 2018

> So this guy broke in without knowing what the exact business was and was so disturbed by what he found there, that he put aside concern for his own freedom and called police from the lobby...when he could have just high tailed it out of there and said nothing. He's got a conscience and we're making fun of him. Yay us.

Is this a joke? If so, I am sorry if I am not getting it, but, if not...

This is not actually what happened and I can't figure out where you're getting this from— this is not a Burglar With a heart of Gold™ who wanted to help solve a murder. TFA is a little misleading in order to play up the humor of the situation, but there are a lot of articles that describe the chain of events, like this local one:

[The owners] Rob and Tamara say Wardlaw did so much damage to the back-exit door at the escape room that he couldn’t open it to run away.

“He apparently didn’t know how to use the lock on the front door and was stuck,” Tamara said.

So, he called 911, and told law enforcement he was calling from the escape room because his home was being burglarized.

[...]

Rob says the burglar opened a door, pushed over lockers, destroyed flowers, then came in and made himself at home.

Deputies say Wardlaw ran into trouble when he tried to escape. According to deputies, he broke the backdoor knob, panicked and called 911 several times.

He provided a fake address to deputies, so they responded to the escape room where he was calling from. It’s a funny twist of fate that isn’t entirely funny to Rob and Tamara.

Again, was your comment a joke that I'm not getting or are you really implying this is a guy with a conscience? He called the police because he was stuck.
posted by the thorn bushes have roses at 8:30 PM on July 15, 2018 [4 favorites]

... And he would have gotten away with it - if it weren't for those medlesome kids and their dog!
posted by Nanukthedog at 9:18 PM on July 15, 2018

I've never been to one of these escape rooms and I have no intention of ever signing up for it. The idea of willingly giving money to be put in a trapped room, to be caged, even if its filled with fun puzzles, it just freaks me out too much. It gives someone else too much power and yes, I'm sure there's some kind of fail-safe word or buzzer you can push in an emergency but if someone isn't paying attention or something stupid breaks, sorry my brain is too anxious and paranoid about stuff like that.

I just suspect I am waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too stupid to figure out those rooms. It's a cool idea but I am just dumb like that.
posted by jenfullmoon at 9:29 PM on July 15, 2018

For the anxiety fueled brains: you traditionally enter in one door, and have to run the puzzles to exit another door. There are usually 2 or three rooms.

The original door has always been open, it just doesn’t count if you leave there. And for the hardcore enthusiast it disqualifies the timed score in the same way accepting hints does.
posted by politikitty at 12:01 AM on July 16, 2018 [3 favorites]

I don't even like escape room games on my computer. I find them frustrating and anxiety-inducing even as 2D pictures on my screen. Having to do one of these in real life, with my coworkers (yes I have read that you can leave, if you want to be That Guy) sounds like a whole new kind of hell that I had never imagined existed until today.
posted by Anticipation Of A New Lover's Arrival, The at 5:12 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

Fizz: I've never been to one of these escape rooms and I have no intention of ever signing up for it.

My sister-in-law took a bunch of friends to one of these places in downtown Boston, for her husband's 50th birthday. It was fun!

There were three separate "rooms" with their own theme (ours was ruins á la "Indiana Jones"), each a series of smaller rooms that you had to get into and then back out of. There was catered Mexican food in the back of of the "room" and we brought in a lot of beer, so while a few gung-ho types beavered away a few of us hung out and ate a lot and drank beer, then went up and solved most of the room.

I geocache, so a bunch of the puzzles in the room could be solved using those tricks. There were a couple of people who insisted on being Capital-L Leaders, so we let them work on something else while we made progress. Almost solved it, too!
posted by wenestvedt at 9:28 AM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

Now I’m really curious about which Poirot novels don’t have a dead body in them.

Come on, this is disingenuous. Agatha Christie writes about murder but she doesn't describe the gory details in that way. Those sorts of mysteries are incredibly short of blood-spattered abattoirs and you can talk about them without worrying about how your 60-year-old conservative religious coworkers are going to handle the messy bits. I'm not even against gore personally, but I'd feel super uncomfortable winding up in that kind of setting with people I don't know super well who might not handle it well.
posted by Sequence at 10:04 AM on July 16, 2018

Most of these places offer at least a couple of different theme options at any given time (otherwise there'd be no repeat business), so I'd hope that it's possible not to select the abattoir for groups that aren't into that sort of thing (I would also not be interested in doing that one in a puzzles-with-coworkers situation).

The one I did was "bazillionaire leaves fortune to group that solves the puzzles," pretty inoffensive. Definite whiff of The Westing Game, which is a good thing IMO.
posted by asperity at 11:03 AM on July 16, 2018

I would really like to go to an escape the room place, but as someone who used to play a bunch of Flash-based escape the room games, I am gonna be kind of bummed if one of the options isn't "pleasant Japanese room with odd knickknacks and gentle background music."

(The prize on escaping is, of course, a setting of tea and beautiful little cakes.)
posted by evidenceofabsence at 11:53 AM on July 16, 2018 [6 favorites]

Yeah it's really unfortunate that a time limit has to be baked into the concept for financial reasons. Based on some of the better themed escape rooms I've seen, I dream about a whole escape house where I could just rent it out for the day and solve puzzles at my leisure.
posted by muddgirl at 12:59 PM on July 16, 2018 [1 favorite]

so can they add theft of services to the list of charges...?
posted by randomkeystrike at 7:55 PM on July 16, 2018

Fizz, I’m with you. I’m claustrophobic at the best of times, but also a little competitive. I wouldn’t want to take the easy escape route, and I would be a gasping lump on the floor in no time.

I’m short of breath right now, just writing about it.
posted by lhauser at 9:09 PM on July 16, 2018

If you're gonna do an escape room, make sure you visit the loo first.

Ours had a bathroom inside. No worries.
posted by agregoli at 11:46 AM on July 17, 2018