60 Crazy, Epic, And Funny Escape Room Stories From Both Workers And Customers

"Oh my god, my time has come.

People do dumb stuff in escape rooms constantly, but that’s the whole point, and it’s usually in good fun. The best part of my old escape room job was that it was literally right next door to a brothel. People would frequently come to our door not realizing that they were one door over from where they wanted to be and ask 'Hey, how much?'

Me, in my customer service voice: 'Well it depends on how many people you bring, it’s $40 each if you’re a group of two, and goes down to $32 each if you’re a group of eight. Usually, we recommend groups of 4 to 6 people, that seems to be the sweet spot.'

Their looks of horror will make me laugh forever."

"As players: We walk into a pirate-themed escape room, there is a treasure on the floor, a cannon a parrot, scattered maps... and a piano. My friend is like, 'Oh cool, I can play some backing music.' Proceeds to play the 'Pirates of the Caribbean' theme, and CLUNK, the door unlocks and the game is over. The whole point was to solve puzzles to collect pieces to the music sheet of the theme. Best thirty seconds and 20€ ever spent."

"Went to an escape room for a work bonding thing. Bunch of mathematicians and engineers with ASD. A few things in the room were broken (LEDs wouldn't light up to reveal clues, pulleys were out of alignment, etc. I think the people right before we broke a bunch of things). My group fixated on repairing those things and wouldn't look for clues. We ended up finishing just in time (I found most of the clues) and the workers thanked us for fixing stuff and gave a discount. Apparently, one clue never worked consistently until a coworker took a soldering kit out of his pocket and repaired the wires."

"I was at a heist-themed escape room over Christmas, which featured a bit where you have to maneuver past lasers and get a diamond. If you tripped the laser the display case would close and you needed to go back to the start of the room to reset everything.

After we finished the room we were told about a group of 4 elderly women who just walked through the lasers, and had one of the group stay at the beginning, resetting the trip.

Absolute geniuses. I can just imagine it. The cackling as they break the system."

"We got out of the escape room (a super amazing nuclear explosion room in Chattanooga Tennessee). The room operator was cracking up laughing. I guess at one point in order to get keys or clues my overenthusiastic husband had picked up my 8-year-old nephew by the ankles upside down and was shoving him in barrels. I had no idea he was doing this but the operator was dying."

"Not sure if this counts. I did an escape room with a group of friends. In the end, you found a flash drive that was supposed to be plugged into a computer. We opened the document and there were instructions to print. We got to print, and the printer gave us an "out of ink" error. We assumed this was part of the game and started looking for a magenta cartridge. Then an employee slipped into the room, replaced the cartridge, and told us to hit print again.

Apparently, it was not part of the game. They just ran out of ink."

"I went to one where there were three identical rooms in which teams competed in at the same time. If you finished you then got to watch and listen to the other teams. Our team did pretty well and we got to watch the other two teams try to complete it.

Anyway, there was this one lock which was a number combination and you solved it by finding some sheet music in a book, with five notes on it, which corresponded to numbers. The piece was entitled 'The Key' or something similar so you knew you needed it for the lock. Anyway, this other team instead of converting to numbers and putting in the combination chanted this five-note tune at the lock. When it did not work they tried again, then again, then someone else tried. This went on for 10 minutes and got louder and louder. Eventually, the game master stepped in and told them it was not going to work. Apparently, they were the only team ever to do that."

polarbearstina replied: "Theater nerds."

"So this isn’t necessarily absurd on the player's side, but instead from the Gamemaster. One time our players were doing the bank heist theme, (done in the dark and you have headlamps) and after about 4 puzzles one of my employees realized they had an item in their pockets still. So we brain-blasted for a couple of minutes and decided the best course of action was to pretend the employee was a 'security guard' and walk around the bank. So we went over the room intercom and warned them to hide cause it looked like the security guard was coming to them. Seeing all of the players hide in complete fear was priceless. One guy wasn’t even hiding, he was just sprawled up against the wall. Our 'security guard' walked around, said 'Everything seems good' and placed the item down on the desk. It was legendary that they didn’t suspect anything."

"One time my friend tried picking the lock and the game master just came in and said, 'NO.'"

"I was doing an escape room with three males friends. I’m a smaller girl. It was nautically themed, and the game started with the four of us having our ankles chained together. We had to figure out how to get the key to unlock ourselves. So I just took off my shoes, slipped out of the shackles, and grabbed the key from across the room."

"Our whole group was struggling to open a combination lock in one of our puzzles, every single one of us tried at least twice and couldn’t get it.

Then a paper slipped under the door and it was instructions for how to use a combination lock."

"The clue was hidden in a computer, but the keyboard was hidden in the escape room somewhere. Knew that windows had an onscreen keyboard, so logged in with that instead of finding the physical keyboard."

"In the Netherlands, there is this prison escape room where everyone is a prisoner and you have to escape prison (it is done in an actual ancient prison). There are about 300 participants and 85 actors (mostly prison guards and some prisoners).

They have over 15 storylines that you can follow and there are other inmates (actors) who will lead those storylines and send you one quest.

Coming back to the question, at the beginning they warned everyone that no physical contact is allowed because, during the first time, people would actually threat each other to get money and guards have been attacked. Also, they had to warn people that you weren't supposed to try climbing the 50 feet high prison wall..."

"I feel kinda bad about the time our group unscrewed half the pictures on the wall using a paper clip since none of us had the sense to think that maybe the pictures being screwed down was a sign we weren’t supposed to look behind them."

Momimamomumu replied: "I mean... if I worked in that escape room, I'd be hella impressed you got it all undone with a paper clip."

"Not a worker, but the local escape room in my town has an absurd thing the players do to get clues if we're stumped - we have to do the YMCA dance motions if we need help."

"Had one lady use a stolen credit card to buy a game for a group of 8. We worked with the police to set up a sting operation. They were mid-game when we had 7 officers enter their room and handcuff them.

Fun day."

"Stupid but with a twist. In one escape room, we were told (no less than three different times) that we wouldn't need to take anything off the wall. Halfway through we discover three plaques that you had to... Take off the wall.

So the secret ingredient for that escape room was a dash of civil disobedience..."

"I did an escape room with my family and the workers have to tell you not to lick the light bulb. This is because some guy thought if he licked the light bulb the answer would be revealed on the light bulb. The only answer he found was light bulbs are hot and can burn you."

"My buddy guessed a lock's combo which gave us the final clue, but we had not found the other ones. We ended up solving the room backward.

When the room administrator came in she had nothing else to say but, 'What the hell did you guys do.'"

"I interviewed for a job at an escape room. They told me that one of their standard instructions you MUST tell every group is to not stick things in electrical outlets because too many people did it."

scytaledarkwing replied: "What's f*cked up is. I went to an escape room in LA where one of the puzzles was literally to stick a fork in a socket. Everyone told me I was insane when I suggested it. But two of the prongs were folded back and there was fake soot around the fake outlet. I did it and boom gave us the next clue. I thought it was super stupid though... Why risk people learning that behavior and trying it elsewhere?