Jackson escape rooms to return for the summer

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According Lee Wilson, director of discipleship at Union and one of the four people on the Jackson Escape Rooms planning team, the pop-up shop has been such a huge success they will be bringing the interactive adventure back this summer.

“We felt like it was going to be pretty successful, but then it just went crazy and exploded,” Wilson said.

The escape rooms were booked at 97 percent capacity the last two weeks. Originally, only one week was planned. However, the first week turned out to be extremely popular and an encore week was added.

Every time the escape rooms make an appearance in Jackson they will be unfolding brand new ideas.

“An important part of us going forward is that we are going to do the rooms that we have created,” Wilson said. “And then those rooms are going into the vault, and we won’t use those again.”

The escape rooms are made up of four rooms filled with intense puzzles and clues that have to be solved in order to unlock the room. For instance, in the “message in a bottle” themed room, 250 bottles filled with clues, patterns and messages line the walls of the room.

Participants have to figure out which clues are important and which ones are there just to trick them in 45 minutes. Competitiveness is a necessity for participants.

“It’s really fun to watch people talking trash on Facebook and Twitter about their times and who was the fastest and who is going to make it to the championship room,” Wilson said.

On average, one out of every three teams is able to escape. Some rooms are more difficult than others.

“Most people come out, even if they got stomped by a room, they come out and they really enjoyed themselves,” Wilson said.

According to Bethany Shackelford, an escape room participant, the escape rooms are an amazing experience for groups of friends or co-workers.

“I brought it up at work, and it sounded awesome so it wasn’t hard to find people to come along with me,” she said. “I am a little bit apprehensive but I am even more excited, it is going to be a great bonding experience for all of us.”