Christmas is a special time of year, filled with festive carols, delicious foods, delightful presents, peace on earth and goodwill towards men. Unless you are locked in the new Krampus Room at Countdown Escape Games, wherein your evening will be filled with fiendishly twisted puzzles, cryptic clues, and a countdown timer giving you 60 minutes to solve them all in order to escape the room and stop the Krampus Killer’s reign of terror.
I have been locked inside five other escape rooms in various locations, and this is really one of the best (full disclosure: the manager and I are friends and used to work at Knott’s Scary Farm together). Countdown has done a fantastic job updating and retheming their old Psycho room with all new puzzles and set dressings, and, wow, they absolutely knocked it out of the park!
A very well-done introductory video starts off the proceedings, getting you into the Christmas spirit and, soon enough, you’re scrambling back and forth across the room, trying this code here, looking into that drawer over there, inserting that key (too big!) then this key (too small!) in your efforts to beat the clock.
We were…that…close to escaping (I’m holding my thumb and forefinger about a millimeter apart) when the time ran out for our group of four. We were just one number off. Damn.
Any number of people can do these rooms; we saw one couple working their way through clues by themselves. Six people seems like a good number to shoot for when you reserve your time (we only had four and it was fine), and, since communication is the key, it’s always better if you know everybody in the room (that way you can tease them unmercifully for months afterward if they accidentally hold onto a key you need to help unlock the door and escape) (I swear, it was an accident, guys!).
Anyway, get your group together and head on over to Countdown in Los Angeles and bring a little Christmas spirit into your evening. You will be glad you did! Uncle Mike sez: check it out!
I’m proud of myself for getting through this entire review without once making a “slay bells” joke.
Here’s Countdown’s website:
