LabEscape — Local services in Urbana

We participated in this escape room at the end of April. My 13-year old daughter loves escape rooms, so a local friend invited us along with her 12-year-old twins and 10-year-old daughter, as well as my 15-year-old son. (Tip #1: Aim for earlier than 9:00 PM. This escape room requires THINKING and the kids got tuckered out by 10.)

However, I and my friend (whose brother is a physicist) loved it and would have stayed all night talking more with the game master/world-renowned physicist hosting us. I hold a doctorate in (medical) anthropology and my friend is an anesthesiologist; we consider ourselves intelligent enough, but it was brought home quickly that quantum physics/mechanics/computing are significant gaps in our knowledge base, lol.

The room is designed like a regular escape room, but using scientific axioms, theories, and techniques to solve the puzzles instead of word games and number locks like other (also very fun) escape rooms. This was familiar enough to make it easy to get into the spirit, but different enough to be refreshing and quite challenging. (Not that I can break out of regular escape rooms with any sort of aplomb either.) I appreciated the 15-minute crash course at the beginning on basic scientific principles, such as light and wavelengths, that we would need to draw upon to save the world.

All in all, I was really impressed and probably was a bit annoying asking questions and forcing the Physicist, who stayed with us (because of the kids? He could tell at first glance we'd need him?), to give impromptu Physics 101 lectures to answer my persistent demands for explanations of all phenomena quantum (quanta?). Plus, we could barely solve the problems without copious hints, even obvious ones, alas.

The only caveat is to brief kids this age that it is not quite like a regular escape room, go earlier in the day, and remind them it is a different kind of thinking and it is amazing humans can think of these things at all. I was humbled at my own ignorance as well as marveled at our collective human brilliance coming to understandings of these aspects of our universe, even if I leave it to others to be the keepers of that knowledge...

A small room in a university building, but I took a lot away from it scientifically, intellectually, spiritually...even checked out The Elegant Universe by Brian Greene to try to understand more about the nature of quantum anything.

Thanks for creating this...

This was my first escape room experience. I absolutely loved the whole experience! I went with a group of 4, including myself. We were informed that the statistical success rate of this escape room was 30%, and since 3 of my party had never done an escape room before and only one of us had an advanced degree, I was a bit worried. Especially since we were told during the briefing that many physicists had failed to solve the room. However, the clues were very well thought out and the overall room plan was executed exceptionally. The key to success in this escape room is effective communication with a heavy emphasis on listening to each other. We barely beat the room with about 2-5 seconds left on the clock, but I blame that on many of us lacking escape room experience and the fact that this was the first time that the 4 of us had engaged in something this challenging as a team. There were many minutes where we faltered in being effective, but the occasional text message clues always brought us back on track. I think that we kind of surprised the game master when we solved this room. We certainly were a bit haphazard when it came to the order in which we solved the various puzzles throughout the room. However, when it finally "clicked" for us during the final push, it was such a rush! I am really looking forward to clearing all of the challenges that LabEscape has to offer! I think that I am hooked, and am eagerly looking...

We went with a group when they traveled to MN, only one had experience with physical escape rooms although several of us had done virtual escape rooms. This was a lot of fun. The staff was present and occasionally commented, but not in a way that felt like they were given us information outright, usually reminding us of things we had already said to each other. The highest math the room required was algebra, and although some higher level physics concepts were used and shown, complete understanding wasn't required to be able to solve. We finished it with less than a minute to spare, so we ended up with the perfect level of tension but ultimately making it through. I would definitely do an escape room with...