“It was like a laser tag basement with Party City decorations.”

Escape rooms? What are those? Well, it says here that you’re locked in a room, and if you can’t solve the puzzles fast enough, a zombie will get you! According to Trip Advisor, it’s the top rated activity in the city.

The year is 2014. Amanda Harris has just discovered her first escape room… and her life was changed forever. Since that fateful day, she has gone on to play well over 1,700 escape rooms. She is currently one of the most experienced escape room players in the country, if not the world.

Amanda joins us to talk about the escape room era of yore, when most rooms were festooned with cheap locks and even cheaper furniture. The puzzles were mostly bad, and many of the games were created and run by slightly sadistic gamemasters who guarded hints like dragons sitting on their hoards. Yet she played game after game after game.

Despite how terrible many of the early escape rooms were, she still loved them, and played as many as she could find. Indeed, even finding the games themselves was a challenge back then, let alone finding the gems. Those few gems, however, were absolutely incredible. That’s a large part of the reason why David and Lisa created Room Escape Artist all those years ago. Tune in to this episode to hear David and Amanda reminisce about the bad old days and trade war stories about “the early days of  completely bananas, insane escape rooms.”

Thank You to Our Sponsors

We are immensely grateful to our sponsors this season: Weldwood Marketing, Buzzshot, and COGS. We truly appreciate your support of our mission to promote and improve the immersive gaming community.

Topics Discussed in this Episode

• 00:13 Sponsor Break: Cogs By Clockwork Dog, Interactive Show Controls
• 04:31 On Playing over 1,700 Escape Rooms
• 05:22 Discovering Escape Rooms in 2014
• 12:33 How David and Amanda First Met
• 17:37 Sponsor Break: Weldwood Digital Marketing Agency
• 20:04 Finding Games in the Early Days
• 25:01 Why Games Were More Difficult
• 30:01 Sponsor Break: Buzzshot, Escape Room Marketing Software
• 32:12 Early Hinting Practices
• 38:58 Games That Were Too Easy
• 47:16 Sponsor Break – RECON & PG’s Playhouse
• 49:03 Positive Stories of Public Bookings
• 50:05 Favorite Good Escape Rooms in the Early Days
• 51:27 Bizarre Early Experiences
• 56:12 What Amanda Looks for in an Escape Room
• 57:42 What Comes Next?
• 01:00:25 Credits
• 01:03:11 David’s Fever Dream

Leave a Voicemail

Got a question or thought for the podcast? You can submit a voice recording by calling the Room Escape Artist not-so-hotline that always goes straight to voicemail (551-227-7273).

Resources Mentioned in this Episode

• REA Reviews
  • Trapped in a Room with a Zombie
  • Escape from the Walled City
  • Man From Beyond
  • The Great Houdini Escape Room

About Amanda Harris

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Amanda has played over 1,730 rooms in the last 11 years, including that one time she played 22 rooms in 24 hours to set the initial Guinness World Record for the most escape rooms attended in one day, back in 2018.

She’s (probably) fine, she can (allegedly) stop any time that she wants…

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