Join me as I go through the adventures of my Netherlands escape room trip!
Recently, I went to the Netherland because I cannot get enough of escape rooms. It’s like a new desire that maybe should have stayed hidden. Previously, I wrote about going to Montreal and the 37 rooms done there. Since then, I have taken three more trips only for escape rooms. I didn’t post about them because I didn’t know if they truly belonged in the game section. But then I realized that escapes are just 3D co-operative (or semi-cooperative), and all bets are off. For this post, I will talk about the first part of my latest trip, but some backfilling articles will come in the future.
As of today, I have done 154 escape rooms (with 6 more planned because I really like having counts end in either 0 or 5). Which seems wild, but then I saw a glimpse into the Escape Room community. For the most prolific players, 150 rooms is a drop in the bucket since they are up in the thousands. Among the rest, I think the number is still a bit low or in the average range.
Escape room enthusiasts dive into the deep end. On the other hand, I have experienced so many things I would never have encountered otherwise. Some of these experiences would not be safe in a non-curated environment, while others exist in the realm of pure fantasy. It truly inspires me to see what people can bring to life.
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My experience has been very curated as I am tagging along with someone who has a passion and does the research. The Netherlands seemed an obvious location since it’s one of the escape room capitals of the world. I am going to start with a little history lesson that I got to learn.
While not the first, the Netherlands entered the escape room world relatively close to their inception. It was during a time when there were roughly 70-100 rooms in the world. For reference, 12 years later, we are looking at roughly 40,000 rooms globally. That’s a pretty big jump. In those early days, escape rooms had one sole focus: puzzles. There was some story to set up the room, but that is where it ended. Some rooms went hard opposite of this and were story-focused with few puzzles, more of a walkthrough experience.
“The Laboratory” in the Netherlands was the first notable room to combine them. This was the start of story-immersive puzzle games and had a major impact on the Netherlands and the rest of the world. That was my long-winded way of saying that the Netherlands is a go-to stop for many escape room enthusiasts.
darkPark
We started with “The End.” Ironic, I know. The visit location on our trip was DarkPark (which has the second room in the Netherlands). Here we did “The End,” “The Orphanage,” and “Honeymoon Hotel.” From the posters, all of these rooms have a hint (or more) of spookiness to them. And that was true of the games as well.
This was an easier start to the trip because they landed more in the “spooky atmosphere” realm of escape rooms. I needed time to prepare for the scarier ones.
Timeless Adventures
We ended the day on a more positive note with “Inferno” from Timed Adventures. I did not realize how ready I was to put on a firefighter outfit. I definitely wouldn’t have done well in a real fire, but this was only training. So, it was okay that our clothes were up to code. I am going to try my best not to post any details of the room, but I will say one thing: it wasn’t scary.
Scaring before sleeping does not end well. Although we were particularly exhausted on this day since we all flew in that morning, sleep felt like it would come regardless of whether I was still thinking about terrors or not.
The Great Escape
The second day started at The Great Escape where I began to notice a trend. Just like with DarkPark (and any other rooms to come), the lobby area for these games was full of snack bars. You keep a tally of what you have and pay before you leave. Our travels were very tight, so I was often looking for a snack and some liquid to refuel myself.
Our first room of the day was “the Courtroom.” We were minimally prepped for the crime and left to our own devices when in front of the judge. And I will say, if you couldn’t tell from the poster for the room, the judge was very angry with us. Our judge was lovely but did feel very intimidating. It was awesome.
We then hopped over for “The Mission.” The opening was very good. Being drawn into the story right away as part of the briefing is very impactful to me.
With not enough time for lunch but too much time to go directly to the next room, that’s why these escape room cafes are so convenient. And I was very excited to try a classic snack from the Netherlands: Bitterballen.
While typically meat, a lot of locations offered a vegetarian version as well. They were perfectly fried bites of deliciousness. The texture was a little weird; it almost reminded me of condensed cream soup. But with the crunch of the outside, the pair matched each other perfectly. Will you see this in the make section one day? Yeah, probably.
Escape Zwolle
Next on the docket was Escape Zwolle, where we played two of their rooms: “Peace at Last” and “The Rotary.” “Peace at Last” is a room based on the TV show “Peaky Blinders.” I have not seen this show, so I didn’t have a lot of context going into the room. Although there was quite a bit of explanation, I was able to catch up rather quickly.
“The Rotary” was a bit of a different approach. Walking into the luxury club while being judged by the maître d’ was quite amusing. Trying to keep a straight face is not an easy task.
I think this is one of the areas we did run into a language challenge. There were written subtitles in the room that were only in Dutch. I could translate a little but not enough to solve the puzzle. I wasn’t surprised to learn that most groups have at least one person who is fluent in Dutch when in the Netherlands, so the game masters did not notice it could be an issue.
Escape Vessen
The final room of day 2 ended up being one of the best hidden gems of the trip. We drove out to the middle of a quiet residential area to play “Escape the Wild West” by Escape Vessen. This room is relatively new as it opened in April of this year, but the passion behind the room was evident from the first moment we stepped into the area.
The bar was warm and cozy, and cowboy hats were waiting for us on the table. That’s a really good opening, if you ask me.
Then we were led to the room, where the owner had built quite the ode to the Wild West in his barn. After the game, we spent some time chatting with the owner to find that this room was a byproduct of COVID.
Since they couldn’t hold cookouts in their barn, they decided to transform it. I was shocked to find that the Escape Vessen team made most of the props in the room. Wild, pun intended.
We did end up talking to many other escape room companies besides this one. One common practice in the Netherlands (and Belgium) is to have the posters of other rooms as flyers. The escape room community there is very tightly knit, and if they raise each other up, they will. Everyone can rise together, which is amazing. That mentality is something I wish I saw more of.
But, as the room “Escape the Wild West” was new, not many game masters were familiar with the name. It always made me chuckle when they did not know it, but did have flyers for it in their lobby.
And I will end this post on the end of day two with more adventures to be posted in the upcoming weeks. While I talk about 9 rooms in the first two days, I’m just getting started.
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