Escape Room
This section chronicles our family’s love of escape rooms, from cracking a record 23 rooms in 2025 (82 total since 2016) to quirky trip logs detailing each puzzle, travel stop and post‑game reflection. It’s an ever‑growing diary of teamwork, hints and shared victories.
- The room was divided into three segments with 20 minutes to complete each segment. If you finish the segment before that you get a time bonus. If you don’t have it finished in 20 minutes they clue you to the answer and move you to the next room. We finished the first room with a few minutes to spare. The 2nd and 3rd rooms we finished with just seconds left.
- Each of the rooms were puzzle heavy. There was only one single lock in the whole experience. The puzzles worked well to handle in parallel. We had five people but eight could easily be engaged.
- The experience was interactive with a computer. So as you completed things you put them into the computer and worked through a menu system. That was cool and worked well.
- Given the way the clock worked you don’t just get a time — you get a score based on how you did. We scored 63,550 which actually put us in 17th position on the top 20 leaderboard.
- Up at 7am to head back to Orlando.
- 7:30a Drive to Orlando
- Great day at Discovery Cove.
- Fabulous time in Crazy Train Escape Room.
- Return car, get to flight.
- Back to central time.
- Lyft home.
- Finally get to sleep at 2:00 am.
- My Blog: This was the source of my original list. I know these entries are accurate.
- Photos: We almost always, if not always, get a photo at the end of an escape room — but not always with our camera. Either way, my photo collection should have most rooms.
- YNAB: We use YNAB for personal finances and we’ve certainly paid for every escape room we’ve done. We’ve never paid in cash. Also, we have kept one YNAB file for a very long time so searches for rooms should match.
- Calendar: We’ve kept the same Apple iCloud accounts and calendars for a very long time as well, and that old data is still there. And we are diligent about keeping our calendars accurate even on trips. This was particularly useful for entries found in YNAB where we almost never paid on the same day we did the room.
We found Escape City in Calgary tonight and completed the Mindmaster Industries room. The story of the room was great and even though it was just the two of us we moved through it well. The room was well executed and the puzzles were just right. Room 70! 🧩
The Anomaly at Puzzleworks
We (just barely) completed “The Anomaly” at Puzzleworks today. This is the newest room they have — just opening up about a month ago. Yes we were here just yesterday to do The Dungeon. 😊
This newest room had some new dynamics.
It was a little odd to us that the game didn’t have a final time since that is how all previous 67 rooms we’ve done have operated. We have done a couple of rooms with a point system, but it was always in addition to the clock. The puzzles were challenging and the experience worked extremely well. Definitely a great room and a fun, new experience. Room 68!
The Dungeon at Puzzleworks
We had a great time escaping “The Dungeon” at Puzzleworks. The room had challenging puzzles and impressive mechanics. The story was well constructed with a unique beginning placing players in different rooms. In fairness, the game master gave us a couple mins extra at the end. 😉 Room 67!
Florida Spring Break: Day 7
Crazy Train Escape Room
Our final thing before leaving Florida and heading home was to visit Doldrick’s Escape Room and do their Crazy Train: The Ballad Of Skeemin’ Plotz escape room. Tammy saw this room was rated 61 in the world by the Top Escape Rooms Project in 2024 so we had to check it out! It was our 66th escape room and our first room in Florida.
This room was great! You are given 75 minutes to solve this room and it is wonderfully themed like an old school cartoon. You have to stop Skeemin’ Plotz and all of his various attempts to skeem. The story was great and the overall room mechanics were flawless. Screens serve as windows looking out of the train and you see and interact with things happening inside and outside the train. The difficulty on the puzzles was all “just right” and we were super engaged through the entire room. The time breezed away, we used (technically) no clues, and successfully stopped old Skeemin’ Plotz! Room 66!
Reconciled List of Escape Rooms
Our family enjoys escape rooms and I have maintained a list of the rooms we had done on my website for a bit. I knew it was mostly complete and for sure it had gaps. We were talking to another Escape Room Enthusiast recently and I decided it was time to get our list right. How many rooms have we done? This needed to be answered. But how?
The list I had was created from blog posts I had of rooms which was good but not complete. These days I blog pretty much every room we do, but I didn’t early on. Then I realized I had four sources of good information:
After a very thorough and comprehensive scouring of all of these sources we now have 50% more rooms. We previously identified 43 and after a thorough review we are now at 65 escape rooms!
I still want to improve the information in the list. I have a spreadsheet now that is my source of truth and I’m using an overly complex formula to produce the Markdown I can use to update the website. It could also be fun to do some blog pensieve posts for some of the older rooms where I have a photo.
So now, our full and complete List of Escape Rooms!
The Hospital at Puzzleworks
We did our 65th escape room this morning solving Puzzleworks “The Hospital” room in 54m 47s! We all particularly enjoyed this room. The puzzles were well done, hard enough to get you going but not so hard to get frustrated. Tammy thought it was one of her “top 10” rooms. I thought the use of an “elevator” in the room was fun and very well executed. We had to call for one clue and realized we had made one completely ridiculous miss in the room. It was a great time! Room 65!
Instanbul Gambit at Enigma Adventure
Tyler, Tammy, and I had a lot of fun solving our way through The Istanbul Gambit at Enigma Adventures in Bloomington today. We finished the room with just 1m 39s remaining on the clock. This was our 64th escape room!
The room was very well done and we always felt like we were moving forward. There were multiple “a ha” moments and towards the end a super cool solve involving lasers. Also unique with this room was that you actually had three separate tasks to complete, with the final being to get out of the room. It even had an add-on mission to identify some additional information that you could tackle if you had time. We did that one as well!
Recommended room! Room 64!
Tammy and I rescued Robin Hood in the Sherwood Forest room at No ESC Puzzle Collective in Shakopee tonight. Took 59m 36s! Room 63!
We completed “The Museum” at Puzzleworks today in 58m 48s. There is a whole genre of escape rooms that are creepy and this was our first that was even a little in that genre. We had a great time solving it with our nephew Levi. 👻 Room 62!
