Escape From Alcatraz by Quest Rooms
(No game spoilers!)
Remember those room escape games you loved to play on your computer circa the early 2000s? You know, the ones where you’re locked inside a room (or a phone booth or a car) and the goal is to get out ASAP, so you frantically click everything in sight to find the clues and tools to help you escape? If you’ve ever wanted to see how you and your friends would fare if you were trapped in a real life situation, now you can. Escape room experiences have popped up all over the world with various themes and styles, challenging players to work together to escape.
The concept is the same as those virtual versions: You’re trapped in a room and must find the clues and solve puzzles to figure out how to escape. Every room and company does it differently, but the rooms are themed and filled with hidden clues and secret codes, word puzzles and tricky problems, hints and red herrings to figure out before the time is up.
Escape SF (by Quest Rooms) has highly interactive, physical and immersive escape rooms that are surprisingly realistic. They currently have three rooms: Escape from Alcatraz, the Antique Room, and the Blind Tiger, the speakeasy. My friends chose to Escape from Alcatraz, which was recommended as the best option for people new to escape rooms. It’s a great concept, especially for visitors to San Francisco and anyone who loves Alcatraz (me).
How it works:
Round up the usual suspects – choose up to five of your closest allies, the ones with a very particular set of skills, if you know what I’m saying. You probably already know which of your friends you’re likely to get locked up with for some half-baked plans. You need problem-solvers, Macguyvers, good teammates, and most importantly, people you don’t mind being tossed into a cell with for about an hour. Some other escape rooms will lock you up with strangers, which makes for a totally different game, but it could still be fun (probably).
Just like real prison, you can’t bring anything inside with you. There are lockers in the lobby to keep your phones and purses during the game.
The gamemaster explained the general rules: explore everything, think outside the box, work together, and don’t destroy anything, move furniture, or climb anything. He led us down to the cell, explained our backstory of how we ended up in Alcatraz, and then locked us up. There are no real instructions for how to escape.
Without giving anything away, the premise was as follows: My friends and I got busted and sent to Alcatraz (because we were pretty notorious criminals, not to brag). We were actually handcuffed to the wall and locked into a prison cell. We had one hour before the sleeping guard’s shift was over, and our plans would be foiled. There were several rooms and quite a few clever puzzles that we worked together to find and solve. The setting was surprisingly realistic, with crumbling walls and real-life bugs, and nods to Alcatraz that added to the experience, as well as some high-tech features that all helped make it feel real.
In each of the rooms there were surveillance cameras, where the gamemaster watched us struggle to escape. It must be a fun job to watch people in action in these rooms, although I’d imagine it gets frustrating when people just aren’t getting it. If the trapped team wants a hint, they can wave at the camera to activate the audio and request a hint.
Some escape rooms have someone locked up with the group to watch the struggles firsthand, sometimes in the form of a scary monster or zombie, but not Quest Rooms.
My team didn’t wave or request hints (our egos are too big to ask for help, being infamous criminals and all), but the gamemaster took pity on us and was skilled at knowing when we were really stuck (or taking too long). He interfered twice and gave us helpful, but still vague hints that helped us change our thinking to figure it out.
A clock in one of the rooms counted down our time. We couldn’t see it in the first room, so we’d had no idea how much time we had wasted in there until we moved on to the next room.
Just like those original Alcatraz escapees (I choose to believe), we used our brilliant schemes and worked together to make it out alive, and with about 11 minutes to spare. It really was a great feeling of accomplishment.
The gamemaster met us as we escaped the final door, and presented us with yellow rubber bracelets as our prize and replacement for those handcuffs.
The time went by fast and the rooms were challenging with a variety of types of problems and puzzles to solve. We spent our time wracking our brains for solutions and searching in every spot imaginable for our next clue. The emphasis at Escape SF is on thinking outside the box, and the effect it had on me was exactly that.
The rest of the day, the experience stuck with us – we’d excitedly rehash certain parts of it and or laugh at our stupidity, but I noticed it changed our way of thinking just a little bit and affected how we looked at the world around us.
I was startled awake that night and my mind immediately took me back to that cell, my anxious brain going over the silly mistakes we made and the puzzles we had solved, rehearsing them for next time I find myself locked into a prison cell, I guess?
You learn a lot about yourself and your friends in these experiences. Like, for example, I learned that the minute I realize that I won’t be able to eat for a while, I instantly become painfully and loudly hungry, so that even stale prison food begins to look tempting. I learned that my friends work together well, and which roles each of us would take – the level-headed leaders, the brains, the brawn, the quiet but clever. I also learned that handcuffs are really uncomfortable.
Escape rooms are great for team-building exercises, a fun way to work on your problem-solving skills, but mostly just a really fun way to spend an hour with your friends. Highly recommended, and I will definitely try another room.
General Info:
The cost for the experience varies by day and time, and is priced by room rather than by person. Updated pricing information is available on their website, but the room was $119 when we went (early in the morning), and went up to $139 during prime times. They are currently all listed at $129 any day or time, but could vary.
The price includes up to 5 people, but they let us add a 6th for an additional fee. The cost is lowest when you have 5 people to divide it between.
Book the room in advance, because the room reservations do fill up on weekends.
Hours: Monday through Sunday, 11 am to 11 pm
Location: 602 Kearny Street, San Francisco, CA 94108