Room Escape Artist

Europeans are often surprised to learn that in the United States, there isn’t a whole lot of crawling in escape rooms. We have some… but it’s usually not extensive, and more often than not, only one player needs to complete the crawl, and that person can open a bypass door for the rest of the team.

This style of bypassing is common in the United States because it keeps a game in compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Americans are often surprised to learn that the ADA (and American law) doesn’t exist outside of the United States.

Crawling Through Europe

Escape rooms in Europe are well… crawling with crawling. It’s one of three uncomfortable parts about European escape room trips.

Crawling is incredibly common in TERPECA-winning European games. Creators do some interesting things with room geometry and game design using crawling as a way to transition scenes and make clever use of space. The effect of the crawling is cool, even if the act of crawling is painful.

Countries like the Netherlands and Belgium are pretty tough on the knees… but after trips to Spain and Greece, I felt like my knees were begging for mercy. Some of this is the amount of crawling… and some of it is a lack of good padding.

Either way, I needed a solution so that I could truly enjoy my escape room trips.

The Search for the Perfect Kneepads

Last year I spent a lot of time reading Amazon reviews of kneepads, and ordering an assortment of different types to test for escape room viability.

I tried them out during house projects to see how I felt putting them on, moving about, crawling, and doing house projects. Everything that I bought sucked.

Some were too bulky and made me look like a fool. Others felt like knee braces squeezing my legs. And all of them were clunky to put on.

I thought that I had failed, but after my trip to Spain last year I came home with painfully bruised knees, so I took another stab at finding a solution.

My Kneepad Requirements

The kneepads must:

• provide good knee protection while crawling
• maintain maneuverability
• be easy to put on, or keep on
• ideally not make me look like an idiot, lunatic, and/ or total %^&*ing dork

That last requirement seemed challenging given the fact that I am the kind of total %^&*ing dork who spends a silly amount of effort testing to find the perfect kneepads to enhance my escape room playing experience. The odds seemed stacked against me.

Behold My Escape Room Pants

On my quest I found that Carhartt makes the finest escape room pants. They have built-in kneepads, and they look like completely normal pants.

The kneepads are exceptionally comfortable, they are always there, and they are nearly invisible. I can go from playing a horror escape room and walk into a restaurant… and I look like my normal awkward self instead of an extra awkward visible-kneepad-wearing version of myself.

How Do They Work?

At their core, these are work pants that have room for adding kneepads in-between the layers of fabric in front of the knee.

Carhartt also makes these yellow hexagonal patterned knee inserts that can be slotted into small holes in the pants. This is essentially a one-way trip as there are no easy ways to remove the kneepads once they are in place.

Effectiveness

My padded Carhartt pants were incredible escape room pants… or as we started to call them: “horror pants.” As in, “I need to go back to the hotel and change into my horror pants.”

Before I had these pants, I would think very carefully before kneeling or crawling in an escape room. I would be very careful both in how I moved on the ground and how often I would kneel or crawl. I would do all sorts of things to limit contact between my knees and the ground.

Within one game of wearing my padded Carhartt pants, I stopped thinking about my knees or crawling. I moved freely throughout the games. I wore them for a whole week in Greece, exploring a collection of games that normally would have been brutal on my knees. At the end of the week, I had no pain or bruising at all. (This is in contrast to my trip to Spain last year when I came home feeling like a broken old man.)

Additionally, they really did just look like pants. I didn’t wear them while doing touristy things if I could avoid it, but that had more to do with the pants weighing a bit more than normal jeans. I had no problems wearing them out and about.

Washing

Upon coming home, I was able to throw the pants with the kneepads into the laundry without issue.

I did a cold water wash in the washing machine, and then let them air dry.

Buying the Pants

There are two options for buying these pants. First, you can order them, along with the kneepads, from Carhartt’s website.

• Men’s Utility Double-Front Pant – Relaxed Fit – Rugged Flex® – Canvas (style #102802)
• Women’s Double-Front Pant – Relaxed Fit – Rugged Flex® – Canvas (style #105999)
• Knee Pads (style #103193)

Personally, I’d recommend going to a retailer (or even better, a Carhartt store) to try them on and make sure that you have a good fit. The fit matters because as I mentioned, those kneepads are going on a one-way trip into the pants. You want to make sure that you get it right before you insert them.

None of the links here are affiliate links… and that’s not out of desire on my part. Carhartt are cowards who wouldn’t even respond to our attempt to join their affiliate program. In spite of their radio silence on any and all communications, I am so thrilled that this product exists. I know that I have found an atypical use for their kneepad system… but it’s about as perfect a solution as I could have hoped to find.

Similarly, I am thrilled to have the ongoing support of our Patreon community, because they allow us the budget to keep the machinery of Room Escape Artist running… including spending a silly amount of money trying out different kneepads. We could not do the work that we are doing without all of you. 💙

Special shout out to those who joined this month: Mia Lepaus, Farzad Razi, EscapeCouple, Kristine Jacobs, Adam Johnson, and Jayna Shea

To those of you reading who have the means, we hope you’ll consider joining this wonderful group of supporters.

Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission

There are lots of ways to support Room Escape Artist, like buying from Amazon or Etsy after clicking into the links included in this post or backing us on Patreon.

The money that we make from these helps us to grow the site and continue to add more value to the community that we love so much.