Thousands of El Pasoans signing up for ‘Disaster Room 915’
Imagine you’re in a locked room, with a timer counting down, trapped with your friends and there’s no escape unless you can figure out how to get though the door.
It might sound like a movie thriller or even a nightmare for some, but it’s something thousands of El Pasoans have signed up for with ‘Disaster Room 915.’
“You come in, and we give you an experience, a mission basically that you have to try and complete within 60 minutes,” said Joel Delgado, co-owner of Disaster Room 915. “Then, you are locked inside a room. There are different clues and puzzles around the room that you have to try to go through in order to get out and complete your mission.”
Delgado is getting ready to debut his new room: A Game of Life or Death. It’s the seventh room escape scenario Disaster Room 915 has created. The new room is inside the residence at 1715 Wyoming Avenue just east of Downtown El Paso.
Previous room escapes have featured scenarios dealing with aliens, time warps and even drug cartels.
“Basically, you’re playing a game where your life is on the line,” Delgado said. “It kind of brings a brand new meaning to the term ‘family game night.'”
Delgado and his partners were busy putting the finishing touches on the new room escape Wednesday. A Game of Life or Death is set to open Saturday, with bookings already going on its website.
Delgado said they’ve had a great response already with about 5,000 people participating in their first year. The goal is to have two separate room escapes up and running in the coming months.
Escape rooms aren’t necessarily just one room. There can be a whole complex of them, containing different areas, challenges, puzzles, all geared to one goal – getting out.”
“Basically, you start off in here,” said Delgado while giving a tour of one of the rooms being set up, with chairs and a TV on one wall. “You’ll sit down. There will be a video intro explaining the premise of the room and what you’re trying to accomplish within the room. And so that starts off in here, and then you have to try to make your way through the other rooms, and complete it that way.”
Delgado said they have built up a bit of a customer base, both people that completed the challenge and want to try what’s next and even people that didn’t make it and want to try again.
It can be challenging to compete the room, but it’s mostly about working together.
“The success rate is about one in seven that complete it,” Delgado said. “So it is challenging. But if you do complete it, you do win a free T-shirt and your picture goes up on our wall with all our other winners.”
The new escape room “A Game of Life or Death” opens this Saturday. It costs $15 per person, with up to eight people at a time.
