Monday, January 4, 2016

Escape from Santa's Garage

Perhaps the biggest hit of Christmas day was a gift we coordinated for Jay's Christmas present. Most of you know that Derrick and I have gotten really into escape rooms recently. They have become increasingly popular and Derrick and I have done all of the rooms available in Raleigh. Essentially you're locked in a room for an hour and have to use clues and solve puzzles to figure out how to get out.

While Jay was in town a few months ago we took him to a local escape room and he was HOOKED! The addictive nature of escape rooms combined with Jay's infectious enthusiasm for almost everything was an immediate recipe for success.

Jay is notoriously difficult to shop for at Christmas (although he's getting easier) so this year Derrick and I were super excited to know what we were getting him. There is an escape room in Richmond, where Jay lives, and we wanted to give him a gift card as well as a future date to come up and do them together. Then our minds got churning and we decided the only realistic way to present this gift to him was in the form of his very own escape room designed by the Marceys!

His first gift from us was a locked safe box. The last gift of Christmas was a box with the keys in it. And then it started!


The box contained two elf hats and this note. 


I have to give all of the credit to Derrick. He was the mastermind behind all of this and I snuck in a few details. For example in the above letter I can take credit for the Christmas tree border, the Santa Claus signature, and the red and green font. Derrick handled the rest aka the WORDS!

Same with the rest of the room, Derrick was the brains of the operation and I snuck in some creative details and ideas. 

We also got some help from Mom and Dad since we were going to be using their garage for this.

Jay was instructed to pick an elfin helper. We knew he would pick Jack. He did. If he hadn't we would have eliminated all other options until Jack was the only one left. But he played right into our hands and picked Jack from the start. Jack wasn't in on it at all so he was the perfect partner. 


I won't go into too many details about the puzzles but it turned out perfect! We gave them 30 minutes and two hints. They escaped with only 3 minutes to spare which is about as good as we could have hoped for for a room we created on our own and didn't have any beta testers for. We incorporated reindeer, wise men, Christmas carols, and Christmas candy as well as our car and Derrick's laptop. 












In the end Jay received his Christmas bonus because he was able to open the garage door and free Santa's new high tech sleigh just in time for Christmas! We won't mention the panic button incident... 

This escape room was so fun to design! Derrick did an amazing job and had it so organized so that it all worked seamlessly. Jay and Jack LOVED it and we actually just took a trip to Richmond this weekend to cash in the first half of Jay's "Christmas Bonus". 




2 comments:

  1. It was unbelievable! Best gift ever!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, with the exception of another extraordinary gift Jay received from Dad, of course!

    ReplyDelete