Category: News

On October 3, 2018, in Moscow, Rich Bragg, Dan Egnor, Ana Ulin, and Amanda Harris set the Guinness World Record for most escape rooms attended in one day. In the days following the record, we asked them to reflect on those insane 24 hours. Here are their thoughts.

For more details about the record requirements, read our “before” interview.

Room Escape Artist: Did you set the Guinness World Record for most escape rooms played in one day?

[AH] We did!

What was your final count of escape rooms?

[AH] 22. We fit in all 22!

What was your win/ loss rate?

[AH] We only lost 1 game! It was just too dense and procedural for us to tackle with just 4 tired people.

We thought we’d lost 3 games. One was a story choice that was one of those final trick question things. In the other, we thought we had lost as we were re-doing the last step of the final puzzle, but it turned out we had triggered the door and it hadn’t swung open. The game masters had been waiting in the hallway wondering why we weren’t coming out!

Which 22 games did you play?

[RB] We played 22 games at Claustrophobia in Moscow. Here is a peek at our log book:

Our best escape time was 0:28:21. Our average escape time was 0:44:52.

Here is how we spent the hours of the day:

Claustrophobia has a difficulty scale from 1-5 on their website. 1 is the easiest and 5 is the most difficult. Here is the breakdown of how many games we played in each difficulty level:

What were your individual high points?

[AH] Our team magic elevated me to places I rarely get to be. I swooped in to save a rhythm-based puzzle and a blind manipulation puzzle, which are both usually outside of my skill set!

[DE] I loved finding things that would absolutely never happen in escape rooms anywhere else I’ve been.

[RB] It was a thrill to finish a couple of the games as the clock was nearing expiration. I also got a pretty good feeling during the ceremony with the Guinness representative as he handed us the award.

What were your individual low points?

[AH] Around 2 AM we hit a pocket of themes that weren’t my style. I was also cranky because my feet were wet from puddles and sore from all the walking. I took a back seat and tried to play a support role until we hit another game that I was excited about.

[DE] Yeah, that stretch was pretty rough. Losing – or thinking we’d lost – a game killed momentum… and we didn’t even have time to get a proper walk through!

[RB] We played 6 consecutive rooms in Russian in the middle, which hit us pretty hard. As we neared the end, I was so physically exhausted that I would sit on the ground to work on a puzzle and not want to get up once I’d solved it.

What were your favorite games?

[AU] We loved Alice in Nightmareland. It had a wonderful set and really good, tight puzzles. Other standouts were Houdini’s Academy, for its mechanical puzzle elements, and Rise of the Machines, for some unique game mechanics we hadn’t seen before.

[RB] I also enjoyed Breaking Bad and Deal with the Devil, even though we lost the latter. Deadly Vacancy was especially memorable for a moment that scared me more than any of the horror games that we played later in the week did.

Were there any particularly interesting or unusual games that you found especially different, even if you didn’t necessarily love them?

[AH] Houdini’s Academy, Rise of the Machines, Breaking Bad, Deadly Vacancy, Stir in Springfield, Terra Incognita, Alien, Arctic Bunker, and Alice in Nightmareland each had unique elements that I would recommend for a certain subset of players.

[RB] That list of games demonstrates the variety that Claustrophobia has to offer. All were at top notch production value.

Who was the MVP?

[GROUP] If it weren’t for Rich’s idea to attempt this in the first place, and handling all the set up with Guinness and Claustrophobia, this wouldn’t have happened at all, so he’s for sure the MVPest. Without all that work, there’s no way we could’ve pulled this off. He was also a persistence MVP. He sat with some of the tougher puzzles for a lot longer than the rest of us would have had patience for!

Ana was the person who couldn’t have been replaced with another top escape room player. We would have been completely lost without her ability to navigate everything in Russian. Even the rooms that had been translated to English still sometimes benefited from knowledge of Russian. Ana also consistently pushed us to think out loud. Sometimes after you’ve been playing with the same team for hours and you’re all getting tired, you stop sharing your ideas and making connections between inputs and outputs. Ana kept us talking, listening, and acknowledging each other.

Dan didn’t hesitate to do some crazy <spoilers redacted> stuff because it seemed like the right thing to do (and it was!). At many points, we’d round a corner and see Dan diving into something headfirst, trotting off to investigate something, or trying a harebrained idea that we had tried to talk ourselves out of, but turned out to work. Dan also consistently provided key insights and leadership.

Amanda showed her escape room magic on so many occasions by solving things the rest of us couldn’t seem to manipulate or figure out. The moment that stands out is when Amanda solved a rhythm puzzle on the first try that the rest of us had been trying unsuccessfully to execute for a while.

Claustrophobia is an honorary MVP for putting together such an amazing team to help us all day and all night! They admitted to us that they had not had high hopes that this attempt would be successful and that they thought it would be kind of boring. Instead, they had a lot of fun watching us. They built excitement with us as we got closer and closer.

What was the unplanned or unexpected drama?

[AH] We had plenty of drama in the days leading up to the record with last-minute arrangements for our judge, last-minute t-shirt making, and all of us being on the road in separate cities. During the record, however, everything went more smoothly than we could ever have anticipated.

[RB] Our wire transfer to pay for the rooms never made it to Claustrophobia’s account, so I had to spend some time on the phone with my bank during our attempt (mostly during the travel segments) to sort that out.

We were also so far ahead of schedule for the first half of the day that we ran into a location that couldn’t let us start for about 40 minutes from when we arrived because there were other bookings already in progress. Fortunately that was also where we were planning our dinner break, so it worked out ok.

[AH] As personal drama, I had brought a fake bear rug mascot, but we kept rushing into taking pictures, so he didn’t make it into any of them. I was planning to at least include him in the photo for my 900th room, which would be our official record minimum room (room 20), but I forgot all about him. Thank goodness for Photoshop.

What was it like playing with those GoPro cameras strapped to you?

[RB] I didn’t notice it at all except on some rare occasions when I’d need to squeeze through a small space and the camera would snag. I got so used to it, I didn’t even think about it during bathroom breaks!

Is there any chance that we can edit together a blooper or highlight reel from this footage?

[AH] The judge took our SD cards, so we don’t have access to that video anymore. We had to sign some papers for Claustrophobia that said we wouldn’t use any of that video for any other purposes, anyway.

How did you feel at the end of the attempt?

[AH] Surprisingly, not all that tired… too much adrenaline! I felt really proud of us as a team, and really warm and grateful for everyone who had been helping us. Help included planning, on-site logistics, and sending Facebook and Slack encouragement!

[AU] I felt tired, happy that we did it, and happy that it was over!

Do you still like escape rooms?

[RB] Yes! We were still able to enjoy the rest of the rooms we played in Moscow that week!

Do you still like each other?

[AU] We do! We stayed encouraging and positive throughout, which is perhaps our biggest accomplishment.

[RB] This was never a worry for me; my teammates are all awesome people.

What advice do you have for anyone else thinking about setting a world record in escape rooms?

[RB] Pick the right company (or companies) to work with. Our choice to do this all with Claustrophobia, who handled so much of the logistical load both before and during the event, was probably the single biggest factor that made this work as well as it did for us. Be sure to have the ability to adjust your plans in the middle if you’re going faster or slower than you planned.

Also, don’t underestimate the physical toll this will take on your body. Eat and hydrate.

[AU] Remember to have fun! We went in with an attitude that we were going to do our best for the record, but also that it would not be the end of the world if something went wrong. A focus on fun helped us stay positive and productive.

[AH] Find a team of people that you absolutely love and could never get tired of!

Closing Thoughts

We are so proud of Amanda, Ana, Dan, and Rich!

However long their record stands, we’ll always be in awe of their tenacity, planning, endurance, and the boldness it took to set a record in a foreign country while playing games in a language that only one of them spoke… and it was her second language.

This Wednesday we are hosting another Escape Room Fan Shindig!

We welcome all escape room players, creators, owners, operators, bloggers… and anyone who is just a bit escape room curious. We also welcome fans of other forms of immersive entertainment.

We’ll be giving a brief talk to lead into an evening of conversation.

Details

• Wednesday, October 17
• Carragher’s 228 W 39th St between 7th and 8th (we’ll be on the 2nd floor)
• Starting at 7pm; talk at 7:30pm
• Please RSVP on Facebook on by contacting us.

For more information, read the NYC Escape Room Fan Shindig announcement.

Please make sure to find us and introduce yourself. We’re looking forward to seeing old friends and meeting new ones!

At this moment, 4 friends are attempting a Guinness World Record for the most escape rooms played in one day. We caught up with Rich Bragg, Dan Egnor, Ana Ulin, and Amanda Harris earlier this week to learn about their ambitious attempt to play 20 escape rooms in 24 hours.

Room Escape Artist: What is the world record you will be attempting to set?

[RB] The official title is “most escape rooms attended in one day.”

What are the requirements for a successful attempt?

[RB] Guinness will accept a minimum of 20. They require a 50% success rate. Each escape room must have a minimum allotted time of 30 minutes.

[AH] Additionally, all team members must be actively attempting every escape room for the full duration of the time allotted for the escape room, or until the team escapes. We can’t wait for time to run out and we can’t leave rooms early… unless we’ve escaped. If we escape early, however, we can move straight on to the next escape room.

[DE] Guinness also requires body cam footage and independent witnesses. We’ll have to submit various other documentation to Guinness as well.

When and where will the world record attempt take place?

[DE] October 2-3, 2018 from 8:15 am to 8:15 am (local time) in Moscow, Russia.

Are “escape rooms” a new Guinness World Record category?

[DE] Guinness has two escape room-related world record categories: (1) most attended in 24 hours and (2) most attended in 1 year. Neither category currently has a record holder.

[RB] When I first searched Guinness for escape room-related records, only the most attended in 1 year category existed (with the minimum number set to 415!?!?!) I then submitted an application (in December 2017) to create the record for most in 1 day, which was initially denied. I appealed the denial by pointing to the 1-year record as precedent. In March 2018, they approved the new category and, upon the approval, had also created a full list of guidelines for what the record would mean and all the rules for doing so.

I later found out that the year-long record was initially requested by S2 [Sera Dodd & Sharan Gill], a couple from the UK. They played 625 escape rooms in one year, but the requests for evidence made it basically impossible to prove, correlate, and back-date, so they decided against spending months trying to do so.

Room Escape Artist: S2 confirmed this for this piece. Additionally, S2 later also asked Guinness to add the 24-hour category and now that the category is approved, they will make the attempt as well, likely in a few months… we’ll know soon if they have a number to beat.

Where did the idea for the world record attempt come from?

[AH] Rich suggested it to us!

[RB] The seed for this idea came when someone first mentioned to me that Claustrophobia offers so many rooms AND they are open 24 hours. I don’t recall if it was me or someone else who first mentioned that this might be the only place in the world where you could actually play rooms all day and night if you wanted to. Some of us had talked about the world record concept in theory before we ever actually planned a trip to Moscow. As we started to plan this trip, I decided to take the world record idea more seriously.

Who is the team? Please introduce yourselves.

[RB] I’m Rich Bragg. I live in California. I’ll have played 526 rooms when we start the world record attempt. Last year I played in the inaugural Red Bull Escape Room World Championship.

[DE] I’m Dan Egnor. I also live in California. I’ll have played 451 rooms when the world record attempt starts. Ana Ulin is my partner.

[DE, AU] We know Rich and his wife Kiki (who is on the trip to Russia as well, along with a few other friends) from the Bay Area puzzle hunt scene dating back to the mid-2000’s. We’ve been playing in puzzle hunts and escape rooms together for years now.

[AH] I’m Amanda Harris. I live in North Carolina. I’ll be starting the record day at 880 rooms. I was officially introduced to Rich, Dan, and Ana at the NYC Escape Immerse Explore tour in 2017, when you suggested that I meet them! I have spent a lot of time locked up solving puzzles with some or all of this team over the past 10 months or so, including in Atlanta, Los Angeles, the Bay Area, San Diego, New Orleans, Chicago, Milwaukee, Seattle, and Portland.

Ok, so a group of Americans are traveling to Moscow to establish a Guinness World Record for most escape rooms attended in one day. Give us an idea of your game plan for that 24-hour period.

[AU] Well, technically, I’m not American (although I’ve lived in California for almost 10 years). We’re traveling to Moscow for a vacation with friends, a vacation that includes a lot of escape rooms. The world record attempt is a thing that sort of… just got added on…

[AH] We’ll be playing escape rooms at 7 (maybe 8) Claustrophobia locations. Here is a map:

[AH] We currently have 22 rooms on the list that take us a little past the 24 hours. We have no idea if these rooms are going to take us 20 minutes to complete or the whole hour, especially once we get tired and when we need to play the rooms in Russian. We are not sure what to expect for travel time, outside of what Google maps tells us. But Claustrophobia helped us come up with the schedule (with travel recommendations) so we think at least 21 are doable.

[RB] One critical aspect of this whole attempt is Claustrophobia. Once we got the record category approved by Guinness, we emailed Claustrophobia to see if they’d be interested in working with us to make this happen. They have come through in a huge way: building a custom schedule for us that spans many of their locations, helping us recruit local community members to serve as witnesses in 4-hour shifts, arranging meals for us during the attempt, and just doing everything possible to help us make this crazy idea a reality.

[AH] We also have a fake bear rug mascot named Boris, an emoji shortcut for our team name (Bloody Boris’s Burning Bluelight Brigade) and hastily designed and printed t-shirts!

What’s your plan for meals? Bathroom breaks? Travel between games?

[AH] Breaks? What are those?

[AU] We’ll deal with meals and breaks opportunistically. We’ll have snacks and drinks on hand. Claustrophobia is going to order in some food for us. They have been super accommodating and have gone far out of their way to make this possible.

[AH] We’ve also mapped a few quick stops that we’ll walk by, if we’ve earned enough time to stop for coffee.

[DE] Bathroom breaks will be especially fun while juggling the continuously running go-pros!

[AH] For travel, Guinness doesn’t allow private cars, only licensed taxis. We might be having the gamemasters call those for us. Again, Claustrophobia has been the absolute best planning partner for this! Ideally we are mostly sticking to the metro and walking but it’s supposed to be cold and rainy, so we’ll see.

Are the games going to be in Russian or English?

[AH] Some of each! Claustrophobia has translated a large number of their rooms, but not all. Ana will be reading everything to us in the Russian-only rooms… except by reading aloud, I mean translating aloud on the fly.

[RB] When I talked with Claustrophobia about how to assemble our team, they strongly recommended that we have 1 Russian speaker. For this reason, I predict Ana will be doing a lot of heavy lifting for us!

Will your world record attempt upset normal bookings at Claustrophobia that day?

[DE] Claustrophobia was super accommodating. They are blocking out a couple of adjacent slots for each of the games to make flexibility in timing possible. They plan to reorganize things on the fly if we’re way ahead; if we’re way behind, then… we’re hosed anyway.

You only need to win 50% of the games. How does that impact your play strategy?

[AH] We want to earn some wiggle room, so I suspect we will be more focused and spend less time socializing and revisiting interesting puzzles while we play. We aren’t the types to refuse hints on principle, so I figure that will not be different than in regular play. We do need to win half of them!

[DE] I think we’ll be more or less “hint happy” depending on how far behind/ ahead of schedule we are.

[RB] In general, I think our approach won’t look terribly different than how we normally play unless we are falling behind. I’m hoping to still enjoy these rooms and not just rush through them without appreciating them. Fortunately I think we are usually able to do that while still moving quickly.

What are you most nervous about?

[AH] I’m most nervous about the sheer number of moving parts. If a witness gets mixed up or a GoPro goes on the fritz, or there’s a metro detour and we lose time, or we show up to play a room but it’s too broken to play after a rough group came through the night before… any of that could throw a big wrench in this.

[DE] Logistical snags can eat up time quickly. With everything going on and this being an unfamiliar city for us, there are all kinds of opportunities for snags.

[AU] I’m a little anxious about playing the role of translator. It’s been many years since I spoke Russian regularly and I’ll be a little rusty. I hope a poor translation doesn’t cause us to lose time! My mother (who is a Russian language teacher) would be very disappointed.

[RB]  I think my biggest worry is how we’ll do in the primarily Russian language rooms. I’m also worried how the unfamiliar environment will affect our plans. When I look at our aggressive schedule, I feel confident that if these were typical rooms in a US city we were familiar navigating, we’d be just fine, but I don’t know how much extra slop time we should be budgeting for, given that we’ll be playing rooms in a language that only one of us speaks, in a city that none of us are used to navigating.

We’ve played with each of you and you are pretty level-headed players. Do you have a plan for coping with a bad game or someone having a bad time?

[RB] We’ve played enough rooms together in the past that I’m not worried about this. If someone is having a bad time or a bad game, I think the others will pick them up and keep things positive.

[DE]  We don’t have any special plans except to try to make plenty of room for each other.

[AH] We all want this to work. As the day wears on, it will be tough. But then we’ll have a long nap after. Naps fix everything.

[AU] Also, we’ll bring chocolate.

What are you most excited about?

[AH] This is an epic undertaking! I’m excited to be a part of it. The planning, collaboration and support that’s come out of this so far are mind-blowing. Even if the record attempt fails spectacularly, I’m proud to have been part of it. I am also super excited about seeing what kinds of escape rooms Moscow has to offer. We have an entire week trip outside of this one day that will include many more escape rooms, yummy food, and silly undertakings.

[RB] I’m pretty excited about the prospect of being a world record holder. I know the experience is going to be exciting in and of itself. I’m also really excited to just play a bunch of rooms in Moscow where I’ve heard the escape room quality is outstanding.

[AU] It will be interesting to see just how far can we push ourselves and how our performance changes after 10 rooms (the most any of us has done in a day so far). The logistics and collaboration with Claustrophobia and Guinness is its own kind of feat as well.

[DE] This should make for some good stories no matter how it goes down.

Outside of this record attempt, how many escape rooms are you playing in Moscow on this trip?

[AH] We have another 24 scheduled in addition to the 22 that are booked for the record attempt. We’re taking it easy.

Closing thoughts:

Amanda, Rich, Ana, and Dan have been some of our favorite teammates over the years. We wish them luck and look forward to interviewing them after the attempt.

However it goes down, we’re certain that Dan is right, the stories will be interesting.

On our recent trip to Los Angeles, Ariel Rubin, half the duo behind Escape Room in a Box, hosted a s’mores-eating get together at her home. By delightful happenstance, Errol of the REDivas was in LA at the same time… so he recorded an episode.

Errol covers a lot of topics as he bounces between the different guests.

We talk about the Escape Room & Immersive Entertainment Shindig we hosted in Los Angeles at Hatch Escapes, something we’re excited to bring to other cities in the future.

Tammy McLeod and Errol talk about our team playing Stash House.

Amanda Harris, one of the most experienced escape room players in the world, talks about… well… playing escape rooms.

David’s childhood friend Brian Resler tells Errol how he played an important role in the start of Room Escape Artist. Brian and his wife Cam also talk a bit about playing escape rooms with us.

Sarah Wilson, our new Los Angeles correspondent, talks about writing, video games, and order preservation puzzles.

Ariel paints a picture of how Escape Room in a Box started and her 1-year-old daughter Belle shares her thoughts on the future of immersive entertainment… but Ariel’s husband Mike steals the show, literally, when he emerges with a torch and Errol pauses the podcast recording for the fire-breathing.

If you’ve ever played an escape room with us, you know we ask our teammates two questions at the end of the game: favorite part and least favorite part. The answers can be broad or specific. You’re allowed to have as many of you want of each.

What’s more interesting than giving feedback on Stash House? 

My Neighbor Errol #1322: Car Ride

My Neighbor Errol

Errol of Room Escape Divas shares episodes of his life in comic form at My Neighbor Errol. We are honored to have been featured as characters this week… characters with a very flattering introduction:

My Neighbor Errol #1318: The Spiras

Playing an Escape Room with Errol

By happenstance our visit to Los Angeles overlapped with Errol’s visit.

We are thrilled to have finally experienced erroling in real life. It was exactly as we’d imagined, only better, because of the non-player audience.

My Neighbor Errol #1320 – Stash House Intro

When we invited Errol to play Stash House with us, we had no idea the experience would be immortalized as a comic. In retrospect, we probably shouldn’t have been as surprised as we were.

My Neighbor Errol #1321: Stash House Escape Room

Thanks, Errol. We love the comic book versions of ourselves. We’re honored that your experience playing Stash House with us was worthy of comic book documentation.

My favorite of his recent Los Angeles run of comics is still this gem:

My Neighbor Errol #1313: Meetup Activities

This past spring, Anna-Maria Giannattasio interviewed us on the show floor at Up The Game.

We had a fantastic conversation about escape rooms, Up The Game, Room Escape Artist, and how Lisa and I work together.

Pretty much every question that Anna-Maria asked was a question that no one else has ever asked.

I hope it’s as fun to listen to as it was to record.

All of the episodes recorded at Up The Game are available via Podcast Profs.

For the third year is a row, USA Today has opened the voting for their Readers’ Choice 10Best escape rooms.

We see USA Today’s 10Best as an opportunity for newbies to start out playing a great room, and hopefully get hooked. As such, we did our best to nominate geographically dispersed companies as candidates for their 10Best list.

10 of our nominees are included in this year’s vote. No, we will not say which ones.

10Best Travel Lists

USA Today publishes 10Best lists to help travelers make the most out of their trips. The 10Best lists cover food, lodging, destinations, travel gear, things to do, etc. Experts select the nominees and the readers vote on their favorites.

According to USA Today, across the different categories, 10Best is read by 5 million travelers per month.

California

8 of this year’s nominees are in California. Most of these are in and around Los Angeles.

This speaks to the strength of the Los Angeles market (and that most of the reviewers consulted have spent a lot of time in California escape rooms). There are a lot of companies creating incredible experiences there.

We recently spent a week enjoying escape rooms in California. We’re looking forward to sharing reviews from that trip in the upcoming weeks. We’ll be publishing reviews of some of the companies on this list and others that we can’t wait to tell you about.

Louisiana

3 of this year’s nominees are in Louisiana. While this is a smaller market than California, it’s no less impressive. The scale of some of these experiences is mind boggling.

We were thrilled to showcase many of these games at Escape Immerse Explore New Orleans.

Promoting Escape Rooms

A vote for your favorite escape room is a vote that promotes escape rooms to travelers.

Escape rooms are competing with museums, tours, amusement parks, theater, and all sorts of other entertainment.

While California and Louisiana may have emerged as destinations for escape room tourism, there are phenomenal escape room companies all over the country. The 2018 10Best nominees include companies in 7 other states. You can travel to so many different cities and find outstanding escape rooms. Help other travelers find these – and other – escape rooms.

Cast your vote for escape rooms!

If you like escape rooms, you might like to participate in this competitive digital escape room.

Details

• Who (Organizer): Game designers and researchers from Northeastern University
• What: An escape room called DAEDALUS as part of a study
• When: Accepting signups on a rolling basis
• Where: The internet… and Boston*
• Why: To study the impact of individual differences on group performance

Teams race against each other to finish the game in the shortest time. Teams that complete the game in time will win a cash prize.

*Eligibility: Players must be 18+ and permanent U.S. residents or citizens. Teams can be spread out all over the world, but teams must have a minimum of 2 players in the Boston area. Some challenges involve performing actions in physical locations in Boston.

Sign Up!

Disclaimer: We are not affiliated with this escape room and we are not participating in the competition. 

We’ll be in California next week.

If you’re in San Francisco or Los Angeles, we’d love to meet you!

San Francisco

Join us at the Adventure Design Group:

• Monday, August 20 at 7:00pm
• The Laundry Gallery and Cafe (3359 26th St)
• More info

Please RSVP on Facebook or Meetup.

Los Angeles

We’re hosting an escape room and immersive entertainment fan shindig:

• Thursday, August 23
• Hatch Escapes (1919 3rd Ave, Los Angeles, CA)
• Starting at 7pm; talk at 8:00pm
• Please bring food or drink to share
• More info

Please RSVP on Facebook.

If you want to play Hatch Escapes’ Lab Rat with other enthusiasts/owners before or after this event, book here.

We’ll be giving at short talk at both these events. The rest of the time is for meeting folks and enjoying conversations.

We look forward to seeing many of you next week!