A twenty-minute timer ticks down as students race to find clues which determine their fate. Whether they are avoiding getting sucked into a black hole or being sought by a murderer, the goal is to beat the clock and escape.
The high school’s Drama Club hosted a Halloween event on Friday, October 27 from five to ten pm. There were four escape rooms with different themes, each rated on their varying level of difficulty. Tickets were eight dollars per escape room if you ordered online and 10 dollars at the door.
The rooms this year included Treasure Hunt, Hidden Figure, Murder Mystery of Mr. Mckay and 2042: Space Odyssey. Creating and setting up the escape rooms was a long process that began in September. Theater director Matthew Mckay both helped create the Space Odyssey Room and advised students in their room creations. Aside from some advice from McKay, the rest of the event is student created and directed.
“Students pitched their ideas for the theme of the rooms, then found out the pathways that people would solve the puzzles,” Mckay said. “Once they had the story down, they started gathering the prompts.”
Junior Murphy Hossink is a part of the theater program and helped create the Hidden Figure room. He also was involved in previous escape rooms as a participant. He believes the rooms will be an enjoyable experience for both friends and family.
“[The escape rooms] are a great activity to involve yourself in if you’re interested in puzzles, problem solving, or teamwork,” Hossink said. “It’s a ton of fun.”
Along with being an entertaining way to spend a Friday evening, the mysterious puzzles doubled as a fundraiser for the theater department.
“[The event] helps the play, but also can be used as advertisement,” Hossink said. “[Since] our play is Clue this year, we [had] multiple Clue themed escape rooms. It puts the drama club out there.”
Senior Libby Cosby participated in two of the escape rooms at last years event and contributed in making the Hidden Figure room this year.
“I thought it was a really fun unique fundraiser that the drama club did,” Cosby said. “It’s fun to have a more affordable option that helps [the] school and is run by students.”
The event was successful with the rooms filling up throughout the evening. It brought around $650 in revenue for the theatre department.
“I think the families and friends that came had a great time and the stories that each escape room was trying to tell was told successfully,” Mckay said.
Mckay is enthusiastic to continue having the event in the future, while enhancing the experience overall.
“We want to keep improving our method of creating the rooms, keep it open and free for students to have some crazy ideas and to keep giving people an opportunity to come in and solve puzzles,” Mckay said.
