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.
- 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.
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!
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!
Deep Woods Cabin Escape Room
Today we returned to Copper Cat Escape Games in Brainerd so that we could try the Deep Woods Cabin room. When we were here yesterday we were talking to Allon after finishing our room and loved his passion for Escape Rooms. He said this Deep Woods Cabin room was his favorite and we wanted to give it a try. We had a great time!
The room has a great backstory and you start in the woods outside of the cabin. Your first task is to figure out how to get in. The story is rich and the puzzles are just perfect. There is a wide variety of things to figure out. Your not just pounding codes into locks but have to really put the scene together.
We were completely immersed from the very beginning. We were challenged but everything connected together. I’m proud to say we completed the room with no clues and 13m 08s on the clock. There were several puzzles that made us smile as they came together.
We were very impressed with Copper Cat Escape Games. If you live in the Twin Cities it is a two hour drive and I think it would be worth it if you like escape rooms. You could book two or three of the rooms. Deep Woods Cabin is definitely one of the best, if not the best, that we’ve done in Minnesota. Room 61!
We had a great time solving Granny’s Recipe Rescue at Copper Cat Escape in 48m 18s! We had five “rookie” misses that we caused us to “face palm”. 🤦 We are coming back tomorrow to do another room! Room 60!
After our flight simulator we went to Sixty to Escape and did the Mystery Manor room. It was a great room with interesting puzzles. We had to use one clue and won the room in 47 m 30s! Room 58!
We solved the Titanic: The Final Hour escape room at Timescape in Belfast tonight. We finished with 8:32 remaining! Fun and challenging room. Room 57!
We attempted to solve the Utopia room at Lock & Key Escape Rooms today — alas we didn’t quite get there. It is there hardest room, and we skipped hearing the solution so that we could make a return trip and try again with Mazie there too! 🔒 Room 56!
We “successfully” solved Bigfoot’s Backyard Escape Room and helped Bigfoot find Littlefoot. The room had some challenges, but we still had a good time and were laughing up a storm at the end. Room 54!
