Insite Magazine MayJune 2016 | Page 26

PADLOCKED IN! Can You Escape? By SHELBI LEMEILLEUR A rriving home one evening, my family and I rush to our father’s study to tell him about our latest adventure only to discover he is missing, a cryptic note waiting on his desk. The door slams behind us, locking us in and a timer on the wall starts counting down; we have one hour to escape. For 45 minutes, we work together solving puzzles, searching for clues, and trying to find a way out of the room. We frantically search for the missing piece of the puzzle and manage to escape with four minutes to spare. It was a close call. We can’t wait to do it again. 26 INSITE May/June 2016 This may sound like a scene from a suspenseful thriller movie or nailbiting mystery novel ... but it’s not This may sound like a scene from a suspenseful thriller movie or nail-biting mystery novel, but it’s not. Some of the INSITE staff were invited to check out College Station’s latest craze. Welcome to Padlock Escape Games. Jillian and Brandon Blamer opened Padlock Escape Games in January. They got the idea to open their own escape games facility after visiting some friends in Tennessee and going to one there. They quickly realized the concept would fit in well in Bryan/ College Station. “We have a lot of people who would be interested in [escape games] – with Texas A&M, Blinn, and even young professionals and businesses bringing people in for team building exercises,” Jillian explains. There are currently three different escape rooms, each with the same goal, but with a different story. The newest room is a murder mystery masquerade. “People are going to be trying to find out who murdered this person at this masquerade in order to win an inheritance,” Jillian says. “There’s going to be a bit of a dual focus for that room.” In addition to the Murder Mystery Masquerade and Secret Study (the room INSITE participated in),