Ever wanted to experience a real-life locked-room mystery where all you have to rely on is your wits and intellect? Then you, yes you, may be the type of person who would love an escape room, and luckily there are some doozies in Buffalo Niagara.
by Max Fisher
5 Wits’ Walden Galleria location has escape rooms featuring castles, deep space, and anicent Egyptian tombs
Using the Ol’ Noggin
Have you ever wanted to experience a real Agatha Christie Novel? (Minus the British accents and posh attitudes). A true locked-room mystery where all you have to rely on is your wits and intellect? If this sounds interesting, then you may be the type of person who would love an escape room! Luckily there are a bunch of escape rooms in Buffalo Niagara to get your closed space fix.
Escape Rooms grew in popularity in the 2010s, originating in Asia. Essentially Escape Rooms are amalgamations of different types of amusement attractions of the past, like haunted houses and scavenger hunts. The twist, however, is that you’re locked in one room. It’s not a long corridor or a maze-like area.
When you’re dealing with one of the Escape Rooms in Buffalo Niagara, you’re dealing with four walls, and that’s it! Times vary depending on what room you go to, but generally, you get an hour to save the world from its imminent destruction or solve the ‘who done it’ murder in the mansion living room (Spoiler alert: 9 out of 10 times its the butler; they get disgruntled if they’re not appropriately treated over the years).
Throw Away the Key
Escape Rooms are a special thing because, unlike a book or a movie for one hour, you are fully immersed in the situation you’ve participated in. Unless the pressure of the situation gets to you and you ask to leave, there’s no breaking that immersion for the hour.
When the mood strikes me to solve some type of mystery in a locked room in under 60 minutes (which admittedly isn’t all that often, but occasionally I get a hankering for it), I go to Elmwood’s Lock & Key Escape Room. Their rooms, in my eyes, have a dash of extra weirdness/creativity that I can’t help but appreciate. Take, for example, their Grimm Fairytales Room where you’ve been captured by a witch in a deep dark spooky forest and have to figure out a means of escape before she comes back to prepare her next meal, which just so happens to be you! They also have one where you and a group of friends are vampire hunters tracking a vamp through an old manor.
They even have an outdoor Scooby-Doo one for the kids.
Lock & Key Escape Room on Elmwood in Buffalo has an extra sprinkling of creative flair that adds to the “authenticity” of your escape room experience
The thing about the Escape Rooms here is that they’re very enticing. When you book the room you want, there’s a percentage that tells you what percentage of people have finished the room, and most rooms aren’t over 50%. Creating a sort of “Oh yea? We can definitely do this if we work together!” feeling among you and your friends (in the case of Lock & Key, you only get placed with friends when you reserve a room, never strangers). Which can do wonders for bonding and just having a fun time out.
No matter what the theme is, any Escape Room boils down to communication and teamwork. Maybe someone’s particularly good at finding clues but terrible at deciphering them. Perhaps someone’s the exact opposite. Perhaps someone’s very good at organizing everything in an accessible manner, and maybe someone’s good at time management (because an hour tends to fly by when you’re frantically looking for clues in a locked room). These are all subtle but important factors to your group’s success.
Of course, you can just wing it as another possible option with everyone doing his or her own thing and hope for the best. While that indeed has a madcap level of fun all its own, nothing feels better than completing a room with friends that really look like they know what they’re doing (even though despite their best intentions, they never do) and basking in the glory of completing the room once it’s all over.
Teamwork Makes the Dreamwork (and Allows You to Get Lunch)
In my experience, Escape Rooms aren’t really about escaping (my friends and I paid x amount to get in here, I understand the whole premise of this thing is to get out but we’re in no real rush to leave). It’s more about testing your friendship in a teamwork setting. Can you and your friends rise to the challenge, or will you all buckle under pressure? I’m not the hyper-competitive type that demands that my friends and I complete the room in x amount of time, or I sit and sulk the entire ride home looking like I’m about to burst into tears or anything like that.
Still, it’s good to go into a room with at least a little bit of a competitive spirit (think less Mike Tyson in his prime ready to knock people’s heads off, and more elder statesmen Tiger Woods leisurely playing the game with a mix of fun and passion). Because if the Escape Room turns out to be a success either in just the experience or you manage to complete it. It could be a great precursor to other activities you could do as a team. Maybe you all start a business together or help each other go rock climbing.
Whatever it is, Escape Rooms are a great place to test where your relationships stand under some pressure. (Maybe don’t bring your grandma, though, because you know your bond is strong with her win, lose, or draw, so you are basically just adding a stressful situation to your life for the fun of it. But it’s your life, so do with it what you will).
Fam fun after “The Genie’s Lamp” at Six Senses Escape Rooms in Batavia
Put it to the Test
Suppose you’re looking for an excellent way to pass the time with friends in a fully immersive environment that will foster stronger bonding among each of you. In that case, you could do trust falls while listening to the sounds of the rainforest (but I think we can all universally agree that’s very boring), or you can go to an escape room and have fun while bonding and testing your metal as a team. The funny thing about Escape Rooms is you pay to get out of them, but sometimes if you’re lucky and you have a good group with you, what you take out of there can be priceless!
Escape Rooms in Buffalo Niagara
choose any location to see escape room information, get directions, & more.
5 Wits Buffalo
Buffalo
Escape City Buffalo
Tonawanda
Escape Niagara
Niagara Falls
Escape Room Buffalo
North Tonawanda
Escape the Mystery Room
Buffalo
House of Horrors & Haunted Catacombs
Cheektowaga
Into the Enigma
Medina
Lock & Key Escape Room
Buffalo
Locked Up Escape Room
Cheektowaga
MindGames Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls
Omega Escape Room
Hamburg
Queen City Escape Room
Buffalo
Six Senses Escape Rooms
Batavia
Trapped
Buffalo
What do you think of our guide to escape rooms in Buffalo Niagara? Know a great one that we missed? Have a favorite? What’s the funniest thing that ever happened to you in an escape room? Let us know.
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