Everyone likes going on adventures because they’re so fun and challenging. In our regular day-to-day lives, it’s not really possible to just go out on a quest at a whim, which is why we have to make it happen.
Escape rooms have solved that problem and made it possible for people to participate in mysteries , work through tough puzzles, and go on cool escapades while still being in a safe place. People try different strategies to get out, and some of their techniques have made an impression on employees. Here are their stories.
More info: Reddit
This was our group, we were having trouble with the last puzzle to get out which in involved pressing multiple buttons, we couldn’t figure out the sequences and finally asked for a hint. The employee just said “all together” so now instead of pushing all the buttons at the same time we all put our hands on the doorknob assuming the power of friendship was what was needed to get out. The employee just went “no the buttons” cue helpless embarrassed laughter for the next half hour.
NiceRice52 , Kireyonok_Yuliya Report
“alright!! we found the number, its 3+4. Thats 11!!”" none of his 3 teamates questioned him, they kept trying the wrong number, i even teased them repeating it back to them. I love my job.
mikep0wer , freepik Report
Something my group did. The scenario of the room was we were captured and they had us all handcuffed to a cot in the room. We could move around a little bit with the chain attached to the cuffs and since it was a small room with a light on the desk we could grab most of the puzzles and bring it to the cot. We solved a lot of the puzzles still not finding the key to the cuffs to get free. With only a small desk lamp for light it was hard to see most of the writing but we made do and continued to solve things. About 20 minutes of solving things still cuffed to the cot the GM sends us a message saying “You know you can turn on the lights” next to the door was a light switch and after turning on the room lights on the black wall right next to us was a black key hanging on a nail…the key to the cuffs. We escaped the room shortly after that.
zeal3000 , ancoay Report
Some dude tried to jam a small iron bar into an electrical socket. Not sure if he was trying to escape the room, or life in general. My collegue managed to get to the main electrical switch before the idiot could elektrocute himself.
UMoederr , dariavoronchuk Report
My wife likes to tell a story on how a previous male friend of hers was introduced to escape rooms; however, someone, either a friend or the employee, failed to explain that “not all things in the room are meant to be taken apart/broken to receive a clue/key.” As soon as the employee started the clock, the friend, thinking a wicker chair had a clue, walked over and stomped his foot right through the seat–like a foot falling through a thin sheet of ice. Immediately, the employee on the intercom stutters: “Uh… umm… yo- you didn’t have to break the chair. Props shouldn’t need to be broken to get a clue.” My wife mentions this story every now and then and I still get a kick out of the thought of someone just shoving their foot through someone’s old wicker chair.
Finally_Smiled , namii9 Report
Someone else posted this story where at some point you find a screwdriver, the point was to unscrew a clock you found previously to get a key, instead one guy started taking apart all the furniture, started unscrewing fixtures off the wall, he was a little bit over zealous.
anon , pvproductions Report
Not an employee but a participant My group went to a pirate ship themed escape room. One of the puzzles involved pressing lit up labeled buttons on a wall in a particular sequence to unlock a door. A common theme (to me) in this room was water. There were exposed water pipes that had cartoonish signs on them reading “do not touch”, and one of the lights on the wall read “water” and the light behind it was out. I had to have fixated on this for a good 30 minutes; I tried unscrewing parts of the water pipes, pressing the water button while trying to open parts of the pipe, everything. After we finally moved on and finished the GM told us that the room had nothing to do with water, I was actually just messing with their water system.
anon , rawpixel.com Report
One of the benefits of going to new escape rooms is listening to the opening spiel about what you can’t do in the room. I think my first ever escape room, the the operator specifically told us we couldn’t pull off the electrical outlet covers. I figured someone had been watching too much Breaking Bad.
donethemath , freepik Report
I did the stupidest thing I’ve heard of. There was a row of chairs, just regular chairs you might see at a conference. I noticed that only one of them had the label with a barcode and serial number stuck to the bottom so I assumed it was intentional and started trying to apply the 10+ digit serial number to everything in the room. The game master told me I wasn’t the first one. Makes me wonder why they didn’t just remove the label like they did on the other chairs..
zAke1 , freepik Report
Turning this on its head, I went to an escape room once that had a ridiculously impossible puzzle. Basically you were supposed to pick up this one chair and place it in a very specific spot on the floor, and then when you sit in it, look in 3 mirrors. If you had the chair set up just right, you could see three pictures on the walls in the reflections. Then you were supposed to count the number of people in each picture from right to left, and that was the combination to a lock. But who the f**k can accurately count 32 people in a class photo, THROUGH A MIRROR, from ten feet away? Not to mention there was no indication that the chair was supposed to be moved to that spot, or that the photographs were a clue. After we spent like 40 minutes completely stuck the host straight up told us over the intercom how to solve that part of the puzzle, and we were all standing around dumbfounded. Who the hell came up with that one? The host’s explanation after it was over was “Well you should have known the mirrors were a clue.” Yeah ok sure, maybe if that chair was bolted to the floor and obviously suspicious. But who’s going to think to pick up a random chair in the corner, and move it to that one very specific, unmarked spot? Never went back to that place, it’s not fun when the puzzles are impossible.
m31td0wn , andreas Report
On the flip side, this reminded me of the stupidest puzzle I ever did. The theme of the room was to make as much money as possible by “stealing” fake cash, gold, sports memorabilia, etc. before you escaped the room. At one point there was a huge fake diamond raised on a stand in a clear plastic box with small holes in the side, and a larger hole at the top. Earlier in the puzzle there was a box we unlocked that contained sticks, the idea was to put the sticks through the small holes and use them to carefully lift the diamond out of the box through the hole at the top. If you dropped it, you wouldn’t be able to pick it up again. I just reached through the hole in the top and grabbed the diamond by hand. The hole was way too big and the box way too short. One of my buddies got mad saying I was cheating, I defaulted back to my 6th grade math teacher’s motto: “work smarter, not harder.”.
eatmorefootball , EyeEm Report
My husband and I were going through one and I gave the person watching a good laugh. The theme was the Cuban Missile Crisis, so everything was related to the White House. We got to one of the clues and my husband says the answer was POTUS. I never hearing that term before gave him a weird look, so he said the president. Still not understanding I said there wasn’t a president POTUS. He then says president of the United States and I said ok but there was no president named POTUS. We go back and forth like a comedy skit for a solid 5 minutes while I’m signing the names of the presidents (elementary teacher here) and he keeps yelling at me the president of the United States!! Finally the guy comes over the speaker to spell it out for me and then tells us we were his favorite people. Not my brightest moments.
anon Report
My big brother works at an escape room the room the people were in was quite large and full of stuff but only few hints to get through they talked for a bit and then nodded and went around the place and threw everything in the center of the room and when they were done they were done with throwing the went to the pile and looked through and they found the hints effective but messy my brother said it was annoying to clean it up there was so much stuff.
Last_Crew , freepik Report
To repeat what ive said in this sort of thread before: If it would take an apathetic employee more than 5-10minutes to reset, then no it is not the solution (no kicking a hole in the drywall wont reveal a special chest unless you paid a heck of a lot for your hour and there is a freshly plastered and painted patch of wall right at shin height).
Considered_Dissent Report
Escape Room employee here! The owner of our competitors came in and did our most difficult room. We warned him that it was a tough one but he just shrugged us off with “I’m good with these”. Well when the time was up, we went into the room and noticed that every single padlock and combination lock was off. Weirdly, the easier puzzles were left unsolved. When asked about it, he complained that this room was too difficult and that he had picked the locks. Which of course in our rooms, messes up the order of the puzzles. He then complained to management about the room. We just shook our heads and wondered how they handled things at his escape room…
mctagz , freepik Report
Scream untill someone came in to escort me out the room.
MrBoxman45 , rawpixel.com Report
My ex-family owned an escape room, and one of their rooms had a old fashioned tape recorder. After only one group they had to remove it as no one knew how to put in the tape and press play. The group were in their 20s. Its crazy to think such a simple device can be so hard to use. Also, off subject, I work at a cellphone store. We had an old rotary for display. a late teen picked it up and asked, “How can you even walk around with this? and where is the screen?” thinking it was a cellphone.
Dyce_M_Demetri Report
Had a group of engineers from Google doing a room, and this guy tried using trigonometry to solve a puzzle.
ItsDers24 , stockking Report
Bufus , pixel-shot.com Report
There is a note in one of our rooms that specifies that teams cant put anything electrical on a hook. This group came in and rewired one of the RFID sensors (which was hidden underneath a painting which is SCREWED to the WALL) because “the note mentioned something about Electrical stuff and it was hanging off”. Thankfully it wasnt hard to fix but g*****n that was stupid.
NerdLevel18 , pvproductions Report
This is my personal favorite when I’m running a room: The puzzle: You find a pair of glasses and a folder with a small rectangle cut out of it. You put the glasses on and the previously plain white TV screen now reveals a list of Cites. Place the folder on the screen and the one important city is written the cut out gap. What every single team always does: Puts the glasses on and then looks around the room with the folder pressed to their face, peeking through the gap in the folder. It’s a void, cut out hole. There’s no filter, no lenses, you could stick your finger through the hope and wiggle it round, holding it to your face won’t help you.
NaomiFenton , freepik Report
So many things. One thing that really got me though– They are all given blacklight flashlights at the beginning of the game. At one point, there was a case full of books that they eventually find a key for. The trick was that they all had secret messages within that lit up with the black lights. They did not use the black lights. Instead… they thought they were supposed to READ THE BOOKS. Like… start to finish. There were at least 15 full books in the case. At this point they had about 35 minutes (out of an hour) to escape. They all just laid down and read the books for at least 20 minutes before they asked for a clue.
thundercat88 , freepik Report
Once watched a bunch of former SWAT team guys simply bust down a door and write a check for damages. The most goddamned ‘Murica thing I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness.
Soviet_Ski Report
An employee of an escape room told me this one. The room was in English, but one of the guys was Italian and for some unknown reason couldn’t communicate that he wanted to go to the toilet beforehand. So they go into the room, there is a bucket there that is supposed to be used as a clue, but this madman waits while the lights are still off (horror based room) and PEES IN THE BUCKET! And because the bucket was in a camera dead-zone and there was a sponge in it, they found out after the room was over.
Shvepi , garakta_studio Report
Did one with friends before where you start in a small room and gradually oven the other rooms. The first room you assemble a doorknob to get out. Later a few of us went back in to put a backlight we found around the room for numbers The door closed behind us and we realised one of us dismantled the doorknob and took it out of the room to check for other hidden doors. Calling the guy on the walkie talkie to explain we were trapped was a little confusing he said “thats the point " He came up and dismantled the lock we were the first people to get trapped this way.
glase_firedrake , Gray StudioPro Report
My brothers and I goofed one time. The final clue was to decipher morse code to get the 4 digit code to type into the keypad and open the door. We are listening to the code and trying our damndest to remember morse code that we learned when we were younger. after about 5 minutes we remembered they gave us a morse code cheat sheet to decipher with. then two of us listen, while one writes on the white board in the room. the first four codes are the numbers and then there was some sort of cryptic message. we kept listening over and over trying to figure out what the message was before it hit me, we already had the 4 digit code, so it didn’t f*****g matter what the message said.
anon , ASDFpik Report
Not an employee, but I visited an escape room with some friends and we did the most stupid thing ever, wasting several minutes of our precious time. The room was Indiana Jones themed and we were looking for the Holy Grail in an abandoned mine. There were cameras everywhere so the staff could watch us and give us hints through several displays mounted on the walls, when we asked for them. We solved like 2/3 of the adventure, when we had to find a couple of working tools and gear (pickaxe, shovel, working boots, etc.) to use them to activate a mechanism of some sorts. When we did that, a hidden door suddenly opened and we could finally enter the last room, where the Holy Grail was in plain sight right in the middle of it. The only problem was, that between the mine and that hidden room was a small passage you had to go through, which was quite dark. We noticed spikes sticking out of the wall, with a skull being pierced through on one of them. Everything before felt a bit too easy and we were sure this was a booby trap that would activate once we entered that passage, to “eliminate” us so that the journey would have failed. No one of us dared to even step inside that passage with one foot, so we searched for another solution, when someone suggested that we use the tools from before to activate that booby trap from a save distance. Next thing you know the staff had to watch 4 idiots fiddling around with pickaxes, throwing boots into the passage to activate that d**n trap. After a couple of minutes the screens lit up and showed a message: “Guys, it’s just a prop…” Thinking back always gets a good laugh out of us. In hindsight its totally ridiculous for there to be a trap that eliminates you from the game, when you paid for the whole thing, but in that moment we chose to believe it to be that way and we never even considered any other possibility.
NizNiz , freepik Report
Not an employee, but I have a group of friends that I do esscape rooms with a lot. On one room, at some point you found a few ping-pong balls and rackets. Two of us cleared a table and started playing while the other two looked at us like we were out of our minds.
Random_Walker , macniak Report
We were waiting for the previous group to finish so we could go and take our turn. This drunk dude thought that his d**k could unlock the door. He got stuck…… Needless to say, we did not get our turn.
anon Report
I just assume any non-common rules given at the beginning are because some idiot has already done it. Don’t jump out the two-story window. Don’t eat or drink anything that you find. Don’t try to climb into the ceiling. Don’t touch anything with an orange sticker (which turns out to be 80% of the room including electrical sockets).
Coelrom , senivpetro Report
We went to one in Ottawa Ontario where there was, among other things, a landscape painting hung on the wall upside-down. The five of us spent a significant amount of time trying to work out what the painting meant for us, because it was clearly intentional. Wasted most of our time, didn’t solve the room, and when the employee came in we asked him to walk us through the rest of the puzzle. He didn’t even reference the painting, so I asked him about it. Apparently, despite being told not to remove the painting from the wall (as we were) the previous group had removed it and left it on the floor. When the employee went to reset the room for us, he didn’t notice he had hung it inverted. I believe that was the same place that required us to open a type of padlock we’d never seen before, with a sort of joystick in the middle that you slide up, down, left or right. We thought we knew the combination for sure, but the stupid thing wouldn’t open. We had to call the guy in to ask what the real combination was so we could progress. He said we had the combo, then sat down on the floor to open it for us (it was on a short cabinet, he wasn’t just lazy). Took him like 4 tries to get it open.
ZeroBadIdeas , freepik Report
I didn’t work at one but I seen someone fall through the ceiling while me and my friends were in the waiting room. They really stressed that you shouldn’t enter the ceiling to try to escape after that.
ThatOtherGuy_CA Report
I went with a group of 10. First room, we solved all the mini puzzles, but we couldn’t figure out the letter combination lock. There were words written on the wall so we started trying them. We couldn’t get it…so eventually my friends were like…hey, this window opens and there is a key against the other wall. Maybe we’re supposed to grab that key. So we used a fishing pole to try and grab it, but it was too far. Next thing I know, a guy lifted me up and pushed me through the window. And in doing so, the fake wall broke. They let us finish and we had the second lowest time for completing it, but we got a stern talking to about not going through windows. And they told us that in the first room, we had to press a button on a flashlight twice and it turns into a black light and the combination was written next to the door.
anon Report
Lots of things can be credited to nerves, first time, or just “whoops” moments. I’ve had two groups now that immediately try every code they find on the door they entered from. Would you really be happy if the first code you found let you escaped? Seems like a waste of money to me, but hey, you guys do you.
Metabr34ker , sergei_ua Report
My brother owns some escape rooms, so this story is from him. In one of the rooms is a sink, and down the drain is a key (the drain comes approx 6-7” below the sink). There is a magnet on a stick in the room you are supposed to find to retrieve the key. Instead one guy RIPPED THE SINK OFF THE WALL to get the key out instead. People are intelligent y’all.
_faithtrustpixiedust , zinkevych Report
Something my group did. At the very beginning, we were supposed to find 2 keys to get through a door. We found one of the keys hidden behind a picture, but we could not find the second one at all. Instead of calling the employees for help, we used the same key for both locks to get through…
ctjehx Report
Not an employee, but once when I was leaving, I looked up to see someone’s upper half hanging out the window and he was shouting “ALMOST OUT!” - to this day I wonder if that guy was alright afterwards. I just don’t think he got the whole idea of an escape room…
whattocallmyselfIDK Report
Okay, I’m not an employee, but one of the times I went to an escape room with my sister, brother, and cousin, we decided to do something dumb. In this one escape room, it was supposed to look like a prison cell. The toilet had water in it, the sink worked, and the bars were there. It was pretty strange. So my cousin, somewhat incredibly smart, thought that something was in the toilet instantly. But he didn’t know how to get it. So he thought the best idea was to drink the f*****g toilet water. And I don’t mean scoop, I mean like a fg dog, on his knees, drinking it up. He then threw up twice. In the middle and end of drinking. He flushed it, thinking there must be something that would come out, but nothing did. The paper to help escape was BEHIND the fg toilet. We escaped soon after.
Pride4Eva Report
Said clearly during the rules, that anything with a DO NOT TOUCH STICKER was NOT to be touched. Said sticker was on a electrical outlet. “I’m so smarter then the rest of you” person decides the best place to put the key was in?…. The electrical outlet.
clouds6877 Report
We have some windows in our rooms; with obvious labels saying “Please don’t open window” …… but when we get the drunks…. yes…. at least once a month we’ll get one drunk person who ignores the label and tries climbing out the window.
TouchofWrath , EyeEm Report
Not an employee, but I once tried to use a magnetized tool behind the camera they were using to watch me because I thought there was a key there. Even the game maker was confused.
anon , EyeEm Report
Anyone can write on Bored Panda. Start writing!
Follow Bored Panda on Google News!
Not your original work? Add source
Unlock an Enhanced Experience with Bored Panda Premium
Go ad-free, access unlimited content, and enjoy our sleek dark mode. Your favorite stories, uninterrupted.
No fees, cancel anytime
Olympian Makes Stunning Admission After Judge’s Conspicuous Scores Ignite Cheating Accusations
