What to Expect at Your First Escape Game

Fun!

This one’s pretty obvious, but it is the number one thing you can expect at your first escape room experience. At Krakit, we kick the fun factor up to its highest level with live actors, who take our horror-themed rooms from eerie to downright heart-racing. Or, you can have a more chill time in our non-horror-themed escape room, which rotates regularly.

Puzzles galore

Along with the experience of being immersed in a fantastical world, puzzles are the other main component of what escape games are all about. Logic puzzles, number puzzles, factoids that make you dig old information out of the dark recesses of your brain—all of these can appear somewhere during the course of play.

Each puzzle will lead to a key that together add up to your escape from the room!

Total recall

Much like all those detective shows we’re all totally obsessed with, escape games require you to not only solve puzzles, but to “read the room” in the truest sense.

In order to access the puzzles that will lead to your freedom, you need to first figure out where they’re hiding. This requires you and your teammates to assess the room, figure out what’s “off” (that is, a clue), put together different elements you see, and remember what’s happened earlier in the game.

Stress, but the good kind

With only 45 minutes on the clock, sniffing out all the clues, putting all the pieces together, and solving all the puzzles can make you feel like you’re in a pressure cooker. But trust us, this sort of countdown-to-doomsday scenario is one of the best things about escape rooms. Gets all your adrenaline pumping, that’s for sure!

To find out what your friends—and you—are made of

You and your teammates will need to work together if you have any hope of solving all the puzzles and cracking the room—leading to your freedom. Find out who’s the leader, who’s the numbers guy or gal, and who’s the one who keeps the calm.

Book your escape game experience with Krakit here: bookeo.com/krakit.

10 Great Christmas Gifts for Mystery Fans, Escape Game Lovers, and Sleuth Wannabes

Still haven’t gotten around to gift buying this holiday season? Well, neither have we at Krakit Vancouver Escape Room. All we can say is, thank goodness two-day shipping exists!

Below we list ten gifts that we’re sure any of our escape game players—along with any mystery film fan, detective novel buff, or sleuth in training—would love.

1. Lock picking kit

You need to be careful who you give this one to (maybe not your 11-year-old niece), but not only is a lock picking kit very cool looking, but it can legitimately come in handy.

2. Mysterium board game

This unusual mystery board game takes some serious creative thinking and collaborative teamwork to win. Not to mention it’s rather beautifully designed.

3. Escape game passes

Give the gift of experience with an escape game voucher, and get those puzzle-solving brain cogs turning at full speed.

4. Veronica Mars Investigations mug

If there’s one thing all sleuths can agree on, it’s the necessity of coffee. Especially when it comes in a Veronica Mars mug.

5. Hollow book safe

Any private investigator in training needs a good place to hide things from prying eyes, whether that be a candy stash or a secret diary. You can even make this gift yourself!

6. Benedict Cumberbatch’s face

Give the gift of Sherlock this Christmas—quite literally.

7. Orson Welles’ Great Mysteries television series

For the mystery-loving hipster on your list: an obscure 1970s serial mystery show hosted by Orson Welles and created by Roald Dahl. Warning: this hard-to-find gift will require some sleuthing of your own (bootlegs or torrents only!).

8. Spy the Lie book

For the more serious and cerebral mystery fan, we’d choose Spy the Lie: Former CIA Officers Teach You How to Detect Deception, a training guide to becoming a human lie detector.

9. Columbo “Just One More Thing” T-shirt

There just won’t be a time when Columbo isn’t super cool, so a T-shirt with his catchphrase is a pretty safe bet.

10. Rebus 20 Highland Park Whisky

The holy grail of mystery-fan gifts—a mystery unto itself, really. Rebus 20: a limited edition single malt created by Highland Park in honour of Ian Rankin’s whisky-loving detective Inspector Rebus. Maybe start looking for it this Christmas, and give it next Christmas. (That way you’ll also have time to save up …)

Make someone’s Christmas merry, mysterious, and bright by giving the gift of an escape game. You can learn more about Krakit’s four themed escape rooms here: http://www.krakit.ca/room-themes.php.

5 Locks You Don’t Want to See in an Escape Room

Escape rooms and padlocks go together like peas and carrots (CC BY 3.0)

One of the major features of an escape room is solving clues that will either lead you to a key or provide the code to open a lock. Solve enough puzzles and open enough locks, and you might just win your freedom.

Being such an essential part of play, you should fear any escape game that uses locks beyond the regular padlock or keypad lock. Keep your eyes peeled for these.

1. The Houdini Dead Lock

You might’ve guessed it from the name, but this lock has a few tricks up its sleeves. The Houdini Dead Lock may look like a simple padlock, but this puzzle lock is anything but. If you come across one of these in an escape room, you’ll probably use up all your time just trying to figure out how to get it to pop.

2. The Android Pattern Lock

Sure, they may look cute on your smartphone, but could you imagine trying to crack one of these while under the pressure of an escape game countdown, with zombies clawing on the other side of the door? Using just nine dots, the Android Pattern Lock has 389,112 possible combinations. Yikes.

3. The Lunatic Lock

Looks like a lock, walks like a lock, doesn’t talk like a lock. The Lunatic Lock is another that on first glance looks like any regular old padlock—but once you look closer, you realize there’s no spot for a key to go. Repeat: NO KEYHOLE! This one would keep your escape room all tied up, for sure.

4. A Musical Lock

While this type of lock—which requires the correct musical tones to open it—might not be uncrackable, it would mean you have to do a little acapella for your escape room team. If we had one of these at Krakit Vancouver Escape Game, it’d probably be set to Meatloaf’s “I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That).” So, watch out.

5. An Iris Scanner

If you encounter any escape room that features an iris scanner—run, don’t walk. You really don’t want to have to deal with any Minority Report-esque enucleation situations on your Friday night out.

See how many locks you can pop at Krakit Vancouver Escape Room by booking a game here: http://bookeo.com/krakit

Johnny Ramensky: The Gentleman Safecracker and Great Escapist

The path to cracking an escape room is to use your wits, employing logic to figure out passwords and codes and locks. This is what will take you down the breadcrumb trail to escape game success. But out in the real world, sometimes beating a series of locks needs a much more physical approach. That’s where safecrackers come in.

Though a staple character in heist movies, safecrackers aren’t always necessarily bad guys. Sometimes people just forget the combinations to their super high-security safes—and someone needs to rescue those precious jewels from an eternity spent in a little metal box. But, it’s true: a safecracker, otherwise known as a peterman, is often up to no good.

Then there’s the peculiar case of Johnny Ramensky, perhaps the most famous safecracker that's ever lived. He even has his own folk song:

Ramensky was a Scottish safecracker who used his skills for both good and not-so-good. Born in 1905 and raised in a rough area of Glasgow, Scotland, the young Ramensky’s first work experience came as a coal miner—which is when he first came into contact with dynamite.

Explosives would be a key component to Ramensky’s future career: cat burglar. Using his knowledge of dynamite in combination with some serious ninja-like dexterity, Ramensky quickly became known as an expert safecracker. He also became known as a non-violent gentleman thief, who also never robbed individuals but only businesses, earning him the nickname “Gentle Johnny.”

His life of crime led to many years spent in prison—which he broke out of no less than five times, thanks to his skill at lock picking

However, when World War II arose, the use of Ramensky’s particular set of skills changed.

In 1943, after being released from prison, he joined the army, where he turned his abilities into an asset for the Allies. Over the remaining years of the war, Ramensky acted as a safecracking commando, who would often parachute behind enemy lines to retrieve vital documents. Now, in addition to being known as one of the best safecrackers in history, Ramensky is also a legendary Scottish war hero.

Not bad for one lifetime.

Following the end of the war, Ramensky returned to his life of crime, leading to a total of 45 years spent behind bars. He died in Perth Prison in 1972.

Though we don’t have any explosives or stethoscopes for you to use, you can get a taste of the safecracker life by taking on the challenge of one of Krait’s four Vancouver escape rooms. Book here.