5 Reasons to Play Public Escape Games with Strangers
By: Alex Guadagno
What Are Public Escape Room Bookings?
Simply put: “public escape room” means that other players can book with you and your party! Trap Door was founded on and has kept a public ticket model for years.
“Playing with strangers” might sound like a scary phrase in this day and age, but, at Trap Door, we encourage you to think of them as your extended escape-room family.
Now, we know you may be thinking: “Wait…new people? What if it’s awkward? What will we talk about?” We’re here to put your worries to rest and share real life experiences from actual players in public escape rooms.
5 Reasons To Play Public Escape Rooms
1. You can take on bigger games and adventures
Public tickets allow you to play even if you haven’t built a team big enough to tackle a Trap Door adventure. Many times, escape room enthusiasts can’t find more than one other person to bring. With our Poconos location boasting the world’s longest escape room, you’re definitely going to need more than one friend for our bigger challenges and puzzles! Public bookings solves the dilemma of finding friends to participate in the escape room and coordinating schedules.
We consulted with our in-house escape room enthusiast, James Butler, who also blogs for Trap Door and this is what he had to say:
“While I prefer private rooms over public rooms (like most enthusiasts), I’ve had some good experiences recently,” shares James. “I’ve played most of the over 80 escape rooms with just my girlfriend and I. Our little team of two has had to really hustle to cover bigger escape rooms with lots of puzzles and areas. Once we tried some bigger rooms as public, I was able to start a puzzle and turn it over to someone else to finish it. I was able to work on several puzzles at once with other people doing a lot of the finding/assembling/finishing.”
2. Play at prime time slots.
Public ticket time slots allow others to book into your experience. In other words, outside players can join your group so you can play whenever you want! People may be excluded if we only provided private bookings of 2 people for a prime time slot. However, at Trap Door, we want to accommodate all of our players!
“We tried very hard to keep Private Only games but ultimately it’s leaving a lot of players out who won’t even attempt our size games ‘cause they can’t get enough people together for a private game,” says Trap Door Escape Room owner, Anthony “Tone” Purzycki.
3. Engage in competitive play and different skill-levels.
If you’re the kind of person who really, really enjoys winning, public escape rooms give you the chance to choose your skill and difficulty level. Some escape rooms, including Trap Door, give you a chance to shoot for one of the top slots on the escape room leaderboard.
“If it allows a ranking system, such as one that allows players to rank themselves based on experience and how confident they are to escape, I’d [choose] public [escape rooms],” says an escape room enthusiast on a Facebook post dedicated to the topic.
Select Your Own Difficulty
Public rooms have the option of playing for fun and soaking up the immersive ambiance… or you can choose to try and dominate. You select your own difficulty level when deciding between competitive or fun play.
“I tend to talk out loud through a lot of puzzles as I’m trying to figure them out,” says James from Trap Door. When playing an escape in a public room sometimes someone else picks up on something I’ve said and where I’m only seeing a part of the puzzle, they are seeing it from a different perspective and figuring out more of it. That ‘group mind’ puzzle-solving has ensured we’ve escaped some rooms I might not have gotten out of with just the two of us.”
4. Save money on escape room tickets
Prices on public tickets are lower than private escape room bookings and have no minimum player requirement. Basically, public bookings at Trap Door allow you to play with new people for a less expensive price and no room minimum. Up to 12 people can join and play our 2-hour games and our 1-hour games cap off at 8 people (as per room maximums).
5. Meet new friends at public escape rooms.
Escape Rooms are basically a social gathering. In other words, playing with strangers is fun and can enhance the experience.
“Some of my favorite experiences have been playing with people I don’t know,” says an escape-room enthusiast from a group dedicated to the topic on Facebook. “Never had a bad public room experience.”
Some people groan at the idea of playing with strangers at public bookings. At Trap Door, we use game design and presentation techniques that help break the ice and give you autonomy over your experience when playing with strangers. For example: our “Bogeyman” experience in the Poconos has two different starting areas where you can split from the group and each can play half the game alone.
“I’ve done public rooms now with a few families and a few groups of friends,” says James from Trap Door. “Most enthusiasts worry a little when playing in a public room with a family with kids. Yes, some younger kids zip around the room trying to solve everything at once. That youthful energy can be a huge help when searching over/under/around furniture or big props. Even better is when you get to be a part of a kid playing in their first room and you get a front row seat to see those ‘aha’ moments as they figure out a puzzle.”
Related Content
Mentioned Experiences
Trap Door's Horror Escape comes to the Poconos!
You are a Paranormal Investigator trying to recover missing children taken by the Bogeyman.
Trap Door Escape Company
Trap Door Escape Room has 4 locations: 3180 Route 611 in Bartonsville, PA in the Poconos; 60 White St. in Red Bank, NJ; 34A Speedwell Ave. in Morristown, NJ: and 77 Wind Creek Blvd in Bethlehem, PA. The Red Bank location was the first of the 4 locations, opening in the fall of 2015. Morristown followed in the summer of 2017, and Bartonsville opened during the holiday season of 2018. Wind Creek is currently undergoing construction and will be opening in September 2022.
History
The idea came to Tone Purzycki back in 2011 after he wrote a screenplay that developed into a live-streaming game. The game revolved around an actor trapped in a situation and the audience had to solve puzzles to figure out where he was trapped. The “Find Me Event” had more than 1,000 people playing over the course of several hours. After the success of several other streaming events, the idea of an escape room was born.
Location
Each location has different rooms from which to choose. Our Morristown location is home to Day of the Dead, Witch Hunt, and The Greatest Freakshow. In Bartonsville, you’ll find Cure Z, F5 Tornado Escape, Fear the Bogeyman, Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, We’re All Mad Here, and Prisoner Z. In Red Bank we currently have Everest – our first 2 story escape room. Ripper of London is also available at this location. Our pirate themed games will soon be open at Wind Creek.
Trap Door Escape Room also offers team building, streaming events, and birthday parties. For more information on any of our games, prices, and locations, explore our website or call 570-234-3366