The Architect

All you creative people out there! Krakit, Vancouver's Premier Escape Game, is looking for exciting new scenarios for our escape rooms. That's right! You could be the designer of our next theme.

Imagine watching your friends struggle to escape your entrapments. Seeing SFU's finest minds fumble through your sandbox. Witnessing trained detectives skip over your deliberately placed clues.

Think of the fame, the glory and the all-you-can-eat pass to Cactus Club. Presumably these are awarded to all the local celebrity architects.  So we've heard...

Think of how proud your parents will be! Your sister will never be able to top it. You'll be the favourite child from here on out. Family photos will be retaken with you at the center. The dog will finally stop peeing on your sheets.

So get your crayons, your sharpies, your glitter glue, the perfect Instagram filter and prepare an entry. Include a brief description of the scene and the objects and clues contained in it. Provide a solution and the degree of difficulty.

For the techies, use media to make your work come alive. Promote your entry on your own Facebook and Twitter feeds. Tag us in your posts and increase the chance of your work being chosen.

Good luck! And remember. "Do or do not. There is no try."

Seriously. How cool would a Hoth escape theme be…?

The One-Night-Stand

The One Night Stand

Waking from a blurry fog you slowly open your eyes. Your head spins, as you look around an unfamiliar room. You seem to have slept in your clothes, on a stranger's bed. You slowly spread your arms, feeling no one. There is evidence of another, but they have left the scene. 

You reach for your phone. You check your pockets and nothing. You check the nightstand and come up with the same result. You pull yourself up on one elbow and spot your coat, draped across a chair, on the far side of the room.

On all fours, you crawl across the room at a snail's pace and recover your jacket. No phone.

Feeling defeated, you turn your body over and sit, legs spread out, on the floor of the alien space.

The questions come quickly: Where is your phone? What happened last night? Whose room is this? Why are your pants still on? Was this a one-night stand?

Yes folks, your friends at Krakit have a designed a new theme room for all you miscreants that have woke in a semi-state of amnesia, forced to piece together the events of the previous night. The "One-Night-Stand" is our most recent creation that pits wits against odds in a humorous scenario of 'where am I and how did I get here.' Players need to be 18 and over to attempt this Vancouver escape room because of the adult nature of the theme.

For those of you hoping for a Bradley Cooper cameo appearance…we're sad to say that Mr. Cooper turned down our request to reprise his role from "The Hangover." Apparently the third instalment of the 'morning after' trilogy left a bitter taste in the mouths of all those involved.

The new theme room does not have an official release date as of yet. Check back with our website over the next few weeks and continue to follow us on Twitter for more details. We also suggest dialing down your party lifestyle, unless you figure you're up for: "The One-Night-Stand."

Rope Burn: Alan Alan's Legacy as an Escape Artist

A crane suspends a man tied to a rope ten stories above a makeshift stage. The man, hanging upside down, is shackled in a straitjacket. He is madly struggling to get his arms free. 10 feet above him, a section of fuel soaked rope burns, increasing the drama. The man has three minutes to make his escape before the fire burns through the rope, 

dropping him 100 feet to his death.

This treacherous stunt design was the creation of one of the world's leaders in escapology, Alan Alan. A popular escape artist and magician in the 1950s, Alan died earlier this year at the surprisingly old age of eighty-seven. Surprising, because of the amount of times he risked his life in front of a captive audience.

The idol of David Copperfield, Alan was best known for the burning rope trick described above. Alan's stunt of  'suspended shackles' was actually a nod to another famous escape artist, Harry Houdini. Houdini originally did the trick with handcuffs (sans fire).

For Alan's version, the artist freed himself from the jacket and then was lowered by the crane operator, seconds before the rope burned through. But it didn't always go to plan. In one of his his early attempts, the fire burned too quickly and Alan plummeted 30 foot to the stage of the Pavilion Theatre in Liverpool. Once he had failed, Alan upped the ante for future attempts, adding a cage of lions beneath him. His final performance of the stunt, at 52 years of age, was done from a crane that suspended him over the river Thames in London.

Looking to match his own idol, Alan also attempted Houdini's buried alive stunt. Alan barely survived this escape when his assistants were forced to dig him free. Apparently they had packed the ground above him too tightly.

Before his death, Alan was awarded the Maskelyne award from "The Magic Circle" for his services to British magic. Think of it as the Cecil B. DeMille award for magicians.

Krakit, Vancouver's premier escape game, would also like to honour Alan Alan for his pioneering spirit in the art of escape. We don't offer anything quite as death defying in our theme rooms, but we do like to acknowledge the greats that created an early interest in escapology.

Afterword:

When researching this blog entry, our crack team of investigators came across a forum of artists discussing this escape stunt. As you may have guessed, the trick lies in the strength of the rope. Some performers actually use a rope that contains a central core of high-test wire. The variable that offers the most challenge is wind. Wind fuels the fire and creates a swinging motion that makes it harder for the performer to escape their restraints. Another danger is the fuel dripping down the rope on to the performer. Modern stuntmen usually wear a flame retardant suit beneath the straitjacket.