![]() ![]() “It’s largely unregulated and there have been incidents that I can’t imagine can happen in US.” There’s a lot of people now who would only go to a horror escape room where there are usually handcuffs, torture apparatus and such. Scary escape rooms have become largely popular and have become a category of their own. ![]() As long as it’s consensual and nobody is hurt, it’s legal. There are no laws that I know that would restrict companies in terms of physical restraints of customers. “I could say for Russia that it’s ‘anything goes’. A couple of times we’ve been shacked by the ankle.” Three or four where we’ve been told where the safety key is. Ken describes the restraints as “Mainly standard handcuffs. He’s crazy like us, so he also ran the stats on all the escape rooms he has played: Ken Ferguson, United Kingdom, The Logic Escapes Meīased on what Ken has seen of the European market, physical restraint is not very common. “I guess that’s why it’s less seen now in the room design: labour cost is high and automatic design is better.” (The players will wear eye masks as well.)” Since the players need to be handcuffed before the game starts, at least 2 game masters are required at the beginning of the game to make the process more fluid. “These design usually require more game masters. Since handcuffs and shackles are usually designed with padlocks, it’s not that common now in the industry.” Room design is more “automatic” now, which means more electric devices instead of padlocks. There were several interesting designs of physical constraints. “It was quite common 3-4 years ago in Taiwan and China. Their insights are both illuminating and surprisingly different from one another. I didn’t have good answers for these regional questions, so I asked a few friends. Many companies that use restraint like the shock value of it.Īre there regional differences, like in Europe or Asia? Some escape room owners don’t grasp the concept of consent. It has happened off-hours and one day it will happen during hours of operation.Īre they (restraints) always clearly mentioned on the websites? There have already been two escape room facilities in the US that have had to shut down due to fires during off-hours: one in New York City and one in Framingham, MA. I am confident that not every gamemaster would be a hero. I hope that when that happens, those escape rooms are designed so that everyone can free themselves. I do worry, however, that with about 1900 escape room facilities in the United States operating between 1 and 10 escape rooms, 12 hours a day, 7 days per week, sometime, somewhere, there will be a fire or other disaster while players are in escape rooms. When I enter an escape room, I don’t really worry about my own safety. Good on those public officials for being engaged and having some foresight. In both of these instances, the releases were added specifically because the local fire marshals insisted upon it. Only 2 of these instances had deliberately designed safety release mechanisms. “Some sort” is a broad definition including (1) the restraint was so flimsy that any functional adult could physically break out and (2) the restraint was held by a maglock that would open if power were to be cut. ![]() Of the 25 games that have restrained us, only 5 of them had some sort of safety release. One can only reach down a steel toilet so many times before that act loses its luster. Given a choice, we generally skip “prison break” games, which seem to physically restrain players more often than other themes do. This is a decidedly non-scientific dataset because it’s nowhere near random. 5 games locked someone in a cell by themselves, without any method of freeing themselvesĮagle-eyed readers will note that those numbers total 27, not 25, because one escape room did all of the above.9 games handcuffed us to a wall or some other inanimate object.13 games handcuffed us, either by handcuffing both a player’s hands together or by handcuffing players to one another.The type of restraint breaks down as follows: 2017 (first half) – 4.6% of games used restraints.Our experience of being restrained in escape rooms has decreased over time: Of the 360 escape rooms that we have played as of the date that I drafted this (July 4, 2017), 25 of them (6.9%) physically restrained at least one player. I ran some numbers on our own experiences in escape rooms. Restraints are less common than they used to be. Hey, can I ask you a question on something that is near and dear to my heart? Restraints in Escape Rooms? How common are they? It’s reader question day… This is a long one, but it’s fun. ![]()
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