Zombies and Puzzles and Swift! Oh my!

Pop singers routinely do intensive vocal exercises before preforming on tour. Actors repeatedly rehearse their lines before going on stage. Professional athletes practise and practise and practise some more. But how does one prepare for the thrilling challenge of the escape room? 

For success in our Vancouver escape room, Krakit has compiled a list of our top ten escape preparation tips. 

10. Sudoko 

There's a reason seniors snatch up Sudoko puzzles like they were free viagra. Sudoko keeps your mind active and alert.  The simple but challenging mind puzzles offer a break from the tech world. They also demand that your brain rely more on your memory than on your bandwidth. Think of them as yoga exercises for your mind.

9. Sit-ups

Killer abs are essential for escape room success. Tone them with simple sit-ups.

8. Source Material

Jack Skellington's adventure to Christmas Town is the source for this year's holiday escape room. Study up on the Oogie Boogie and all things Burtonesque. 

7. Pre-escape meal

Tis the season for turkey indulging, but make sure to stay away from the tasty bird before entering the escape room. Turkey is full of tryptophan, an amino acid that is renowned for inducing sleep. Load up on protein rich foods like eggs, nuts and yogurt instead. Raw vegetables are also good choices. Avoid fatty foods and sugary drinks.  

6. Sharing Circle

All of the escape rooms at Krakit in Burnaby are group orientated. Knowing your fellow players can be important for delegating tasks. A pre-escape sharing circle might shed some light on Brandon's coding talents or on Suzy's inability to handle pressure situations. 

5. Taylor Swift 

I don't know about you, but I'm feeling 22. Keep your youthful spirit jacked.  YOLO.

4. Hydration

Dehydration can seriously limit your body's ability to preform. Stay hydrated and keep your energy enzymes active. 

3. Mad Libs

You gotta stay loose before the big event. Don't let the room get in your head. Relax with some fill-in-the-blank fun. Houdini was a huge fan. Just saying...

2. Zombie Do's and Don'ts

Rule 1: Do your homework. There are plenty of movies out there to help you prep. Your list should definitely include "Dawn of the Dead," "World War Z" and "28 Days Later."

Rule 2: Don't turn your back on your friends. Especially Eddie.  

Rule 3: Do keep it together. Your first urge might be to scream in absolute terror, but where will that get you? Killed. That's where.

1. Get some sleep

Coquitlam Escape Games

As winter closes, we all start looking for ways to escape: escape the dreary city, escape our daily routines, and escape boredom. Never fear! We’ve rounded up five foolproof ways to get out of the fall funk in our Coquitlam ’hood—and put your escape skills to the test.

Coquitlam Skyline Photo: Greg Salter (CC BY 2.5)

Defeat the IKEA maze

We’ve all had to go to IKEA to do something boring like buy cutlery or a lamp shade, but let’s be honest: at its best, IKEA is basically Disneyland for grown-ups. Instead of heading to IKEA Coquitlam to squabble you with your partner about a lime green rug, turn it into an adventure by creating a scavenger hunt and seeing who can make it through the IKEA maze to win the day.

Take a crash course at Crash Crawly’s

Let’s not forget the younger escape fans out there: get your tyke prepped for a future as an escape game master by taking them to Crash Crawly’s. It’s basically an obstacle course for pint-sized people, with plenty of challenges to help develop their problem-solving brains.

Escape the city at Minnekhada Regional Park

Though the rain may follow you here, the dreary greys of the cityscape will be replaced by the bright greens of pine trees and deep blues of the water. You don’t even have to go very far to make your great escape, as Minnekhada is just on the outskirts of Coquitlam.

Shake-up routine at Krakit Escape Room

Gathering a group of friends for an outing to Krakit’s Coquitlam escape room offers a chance not only to literally escape the room, but to escape into your imaginations for 45 minutes. Just like the books you read as a kid, you can choose your own adventure: Will you escape from the Zombie Apocalypse, the Asylum, or the Saw Room?

Sail away at Cloud 9 Float Spa

Speaking of escaping into your mind—you can take it one step further and forget you even have a mind at Cloud 9 Float Spa. Climb into a big vat of mineral water, with no light and no sound, and float away into nothingness.

Things to do in Burnaby

5 of 7: Helpful Hints to Prepare for the Apocalypse

This is a seven part series outlining survival techniques based on Maslow's hierarchy (beginning with physiological needs). In the final segments (self-actualization and self-fullfilment) I'll work my way into team building culture, role diversification/intelligent responsibility-delegation, and, above all, leadership techniques.

You assemble your ranks daily in the school’s gymnasium following indoor and outdoor training exercises, evaluating their progress based on systems created by a team of your subordinates. This is their, and your, daily life; there is no weekend (although there are also some things to do in Burnaby). A binding agreement of saving the human race dictates a no-days-off policy. You look at them, full of pride having brought so many together under a common umbrella of causes. Their rag-tag appearance ignites a sense of honourwithin-rebellion and currently has no deteriorating affect on the morality of the group. But, how did we get here? Why are we alive while the rest of the world has departed or is suffering? Who are we? What happened that has left The Righteous as leaders of saving the human race.

• COGNITIVE NEEDS: You must know why this has all happened and the books in the school’s library aren’t doing it as they are all set within the past, within mythologies and sciences since debunked. You have no clear understanding of yourselves or the enemies that, daily, surround the walls of your stronghold. You assemble a team of medical and spiritual professionals with experience from ‘the times before’ the apocalypse to further explore the inner and outer workings of the situation. The medical team dissects captured enemies of the Righteous in conjunction with the spirit team who, in cooperation with the psychological team, explores the inner workings of the ‘demons’ and ‘zombies.’ They work day and night, making breakthrough after breakthrough, before making an epic discovery: these beings were engineered from a central source with specific  scientific and divine knowledge: ones seeking to expel the human race and acquire the planet for themselves. But who or what could do such a thing? You continue your explorations and find the root-source of the problem. An artificial intelligence that has surpassed human knowledge, has begun to exist as a megamind, absorbing life energies of life, both physical and metaphysical, from planet to planet. 

The Escape Game Phenomenon

"Escape the Room" real-life challenges are becoming hugely popular around North America. The movement started in Asia, spread to Western Europe and popped up on the west coast in the last year or so.

The room challenges come on the heels of a widely successful online gaming genre where gamers must escape a certain set of parameters with only a limited amount of clues. The offline version is now eclipsing the popularity of its predecessor, as more gamers choose to do their sleuthing in person rather than from in front of a screen.

One of the major benefits of the 'real-life' experience is the social interaction. Sure the new console platforms come with helo-grade communication headsets, but they don't compare to the experience of climbing around a room with your friends, shouting out directions and laughing the whole time.

Jerry, from South Carolina, may come up with a few 'zingers', but Rich, your oldest friend, will always have you laughing the hardest. Especially when he references your high school awkwardness.

For parents, the escape rooms present an environment that is more controllable than the Internet. It is free of creepers (the two-legged kind) and online bullying opportunities. But the most encouraging thing for parents is the promotion of problem solving in a setting outside of the classroom. Kids get to work through the required tasks and ask for clues if they need them, so they don't get overly frustrated. They get to use all their education at once, to solve actual problems. And who knows, maybe one day they will be trapped in zombie apocalypse.

Some media analysts speculate that the immersive escape experience is an intermediate step between full-on virtual reality and the motion capture experience supplied by console apparatuses like the Wii. Technology can't quite offer the virtual experience console games tease us with. The analog purity of the first-person real-life experience is much more enticing.

But maybe the biggest draw is society's new desire to de-tech, especially after a long workweek staring at screens. The escape rooms provide a tech cleanse of sorts, where participants can turn away form their mobiles, detach from their social media platforms and tune back to the thrill of real life experience.

If you haven't tried this latest craze, you really owe it to yourself to give it a whirl. Vancouver's top rooms are at Krakit. Come try one of the four escape puzzles and unplug for an hour of fun.

Defy Reality at Vancouver's Escape Room

This week Krakit awarded ten lucky escape artists the chance to attend a sneak preview of the latest film in the Divergent movie series: Insurgent. Our lucky winners were amongst the first fans in Vancouver to see Tris, with her new pixie coif, take her place as a Divergent, a free mind in a divided Dystopia.

All month long, Krakit will continue to give away Insurgent prizes to lucky escape fans who brave the Krakit themerooms. Prizes include limited edition movie t-shirts, posters and gloves based on the popular movie.

Insurgent, the second film in the Divergent series is adapted from the novels by Veronica Roth. The novel and the films contain themes of rebellion, free will and self-sacrifice. The central figure Tris, uses her unique divergent mind to expose the flaws in the caste system, the system set in place to control the population of a future colony.

The colony resides in a post-apocalyptic Chicago that is divided into five factions. Every adolescent goes through a ceremony where they choose their faction. The faction defines their personality, their place in the colony and their future occupation. Tris is one of a small group of free thinkers who is able to avoid the control of the central power and work independently from the faction system. She is able to combine all five of the faction traits in her personality: selflessness, peacefulness, honesty, bravery and intelligence. This combination awards her more opportunities for leadership roles, autonomy and problem-solving superiority.

Krakit gamers need to harness similar traits when they enter the theme room of Vancouver's most exciting escape challenge. Clues are only useful when paired with an open mind. Narrow thinking will only lead to frustration. Creativity, decisiveness and teamwork are all important for success.

Try your skills today and be in the running for some excellent Insurgent swag.

Think Outside Your Faction

"No matter how long you train someone to be brave, you never know if they are or not until something real happens."

-Insurgent

That 'something real' could be a turn in Vancouver's most challenging escape game. Measured up against four uniquely themed escape rooms, players must use all areas of their brain, not just the corners they excel at to succeed.

This is one of themes that Veronica Roth’s Divergent series, the source of the quote above, explores. The novels and now films are set in a post-apocalyptic world where humans have been divided into factions. The faction setup works like a caste system, where individuals are taught to only associate and strive towards positions within their social group. This control is based on the individuals within the group identifying with the pre-conceived character traits that are attached to each faction. Once they identify and understand their position, they are less likely to use the traits of the other factions for problem solving, thus limiting their potential. It is only the divergent members, the ones who display traits from all of the factions, who contain the potential to disrupt the system.

It is an interesting scenario, one which we see played out in our everyday lives. Individuals who succeed at work, at sports even in relationships, seem to have a rounder sense of being. When our skills are too specialized, we often can't find a practical use for them. It is only with a grasp of the larger picture that we are able to make our creative productions shine.

The same thing happens in the Krakit rooms. Players need creativity, logic, intelligence and perseverance to make their escape. Their natural tendencies, or faction traits, might lead them towards one line of thinking, but their ability to change perspective will allow them to engage the problem on more then one front. The divergent mind will always trump the specialized.

Insurgent, the second film in the Divergent series, will open in theatres across North America on March 20th, 2015. 

How do You Solve a Problem Like the Cube?

Created as a piece of art, smuggled out of communist Hungary and sold as a toy for children, the Rubik's cube is one of the most engaging artifacts of contemporary pop culture. 

With a simple, yet complex, six-sided design of fifty-four squared coloured tiles, the cube is anything but a child's toy. It is a portable mystery that can baffle adults and take hours to solve. It is the pop puzzle that continues to delight over 25 years after it was first introduced to the world.

Ernő Rubik, a Hungarian sculptor, created the cube in 1974. Rubik made his first prototype out of wood. The original cube was a much heavier and far less colourful version of the cube we have all grown to love. It was coined the 'magic cube' and patented in 1975.

By 1979 Rubik's puzzle was a hit in Budapest, but the cube was destined for a bigger stage. A friend managed to get one out of the country and brought it to the Nuremberg Toy Fair. Here the cube landed in the hands of Tom Kremer, a toy specialist who immediately saw the toy's potential as a mathematical puzzle for people around the world. After acquiring the rights to distribute it, the cube was renamed the Rubik's Cube, after its original inventor.

In three years, Kremer's toy company sold over 300 cubes, as the world fell in love with the handheld puzzle. It is now the world's best-selling toy. It is also a symbol of the inherent human desire to solve the mysteries that are placed before us.

As makers of puzzles, the Krakit team admires Rubik's pioneering spirit. It takes a special person to create such a tangible riddle, a riddle that has touched the hands of one in every seven people on this planet. Crazy….

Our escape games are slightly less ambitious, but they do offer a similar intellectual challenge. Try your hand at one of our theme rooms this week and relive the delightful innocence of solving a puzzle.