Escape Room Fayetteville is a live Escape Room Adventure. It is a “Real Life” interactive escape game where players determine the outcome. Participants work as a team to solve clues and puzzles to make the ultimate escape in 60 minutes. Up & Coming Weekly’s movie reviewer Heather Griffiths booked a tour. Here is her experience. 

The first rule of Escape Room: Fayetteville is you can’t talk about Escape Room: Fayetteville. For real. I signed a nondisclosure agreement and everything, so this review will not include a detailed walk through of the room my friends and I escaped. But I can tell you a little bit about the experience.

I wanted to do something for my husband’s birthday. Coincidentally, I saw the advertisement for Escape Room: Fayetteville around the same time I was looking for a good present. A few months back an Escape Room experience was featured on The Big Bang Theory, and it seemed like a good fit. The production values of Escape Room: Fayetteville were not as good as seen on The Big Bang Theory, but I wouldn’t expect them to be. The point is to solve the puzzles and escape. The rest is window dressing. As an occasional tabletop gamer married to a regular LARPer (Live Action Role Player), I know the fun is in agreeing on a shared reality, and all the props contribute to that. Your imagination supplies the rest. 

The first hurdle was getting a big enough group for a party to buy their tickets for the same day. The tickets are $26 Thursdays and $28 Friday through Sunday, and each room can accommodate up to eight people. The rooms book up quickly. Even booking three weeks ahead, the selection was limited.  

I opted for the R.I.P: Rest in Pieces room, and there was a 15-year-old in our group. She enjoyed it as much as the rest of us.

We arrived early, as recommended by the website (www.escaperoomfayettevillenc.com/). First, there was a video introduction featuring violence towards women that probably should not have made me giggle. Then, we were given goggles for blindfolds and lined up for a walk into the serial killer’s lair. Our host, Caroline, kept our cellphones and left, after telling us that communication is key to getting out of the room alive. Naturally, we immediately split off individually and in groups of two to touch everything and move stuff around while completely failing to communicate. We soon got ourselves sorted out, and with three minutes left on the clock, we found the key to escaping. We did have some trouble making the locks work, even with the right combinations, but our host told us to expect that. In fact, she was very helpful, chiming in with clues when we got too frustrated. 

Getting out alive made us feel smart, and we asked how many people solve the puzzle. Our host told us that about a third of the people make it out of the room before the timer dings, signaling the return of the killer. What is the record for quickest escape? About 49 minutes. 

I liked not knowing what was going to happen, and I liked that we worked together on some of the more difficult clues. I would love to go back and see if we could make it through the other rooms, which
are supposed to be harder
to solve.