In The NEWS 

We are excited to announce that we have received TWO awards from Morty!

We appreciate everyone who has contributed to making Eleventh Hour Enigma Tulsa's Premier Escape Room Experience.  And we are honored and grateful to you, our Escape Artists.  You made this possible...
THANK YOU!

Top 100 Escape Rooms in the United States - July 2019

If you have read our article, Top 100 Escape Rooms in the World – July 2019, you will see that the US continues to be well-represented in the world rankings!  Just as escape room businesses do in other countries, US businesses take pride and pay a lot of attention to escape room quality and customer satisfaction.  And their efforts have paid off!  To provide the recognition they deserve, we have updated the list of the best escape rooms in the US.

We added five businesses to our tracking list and removed several that have gone out of business.  Two of the newly-added businesses appear in this Top 100 list – Unreal Escapes (Staten Island, NY) and Doldrick’s Escape Room (Kissimmee, FL).  Unreal Escapes debuts on our list at #1 (wow!) and Doldrick’s Escape Room at #23.  Unreal Escapes is at the top of the list because they have more total reviews than Nexus Escape Room.

Several other businesses became eligible for ranking as they now have greater than 150 reviews.  Eight of those now appear in this Top 100 list. 

Since this is the second month using the new process, you will now see the previous month’s ranking.  Note that downward movement in this list is NOT necessarily an indication that the average rating for a business has decreased specially since additional businesses have joined the ranked set.  You can pull up the June ranking and put the two side-by-side to see how the average for a business has changed.

Regarding movement within the Top 100, we are seeing some decent movement.  Eleventh Hour Enigma (Tulsa, OK) moves up 11 to #7, Mindquest Escape Games (Jupiter, FL) moves up 16 to #55, and Mountain Time Escape Rooms (Breckenridge, CO) moves up 12 to #61!  Great job folks!

We love stats and for those of you who also love statistics here are some more:

   Total number of businesses: 2,327
   Number of ranked businesses (after filtering): 1,019
   Average rating for ranked businesses: 4.75
   Standard deviation for ranked businesses: 0.23

We are considering creating top lists for the UK, Canada, and Spain.  If you would like to see one or more of these lists, please let us know at contact@escapetheroomz.com.

If you don’t see your business listed, or want the details of your average rating, please complete the form below the list.  We will try to respond quickly, but please allow 24 – 48 hours for a response.

If you want to know when we post future Top 100 lists, you can sign up using the sign-up form to the right or follow us on either Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

Here are the top 100 US escape room businesses for July 2019:

 

 

 

 

 

Rank Prev. Business City State Ave. Rating
1 NA Unreal Escapes Staten Island NY 5.000
2 NA Nexus Escape Room Pembroke Pines FL 5.000
3 1 Chambers Escape Games Honolulu HI 4.998
4 2 Portal Escape Rooms Springfield OR 4.993
5 3 Get Out! Escape Room Orlando Orlando FL 4.988
6 4 Red Fox Escapes Cambridge MA 4.988
7 18 Eleventh Hour Enigma Tulsa OK 4.985
8 11 The Escape Game Atlanta Atlanta GA 4.985
9 6 Escape Room Sports Pittsburgh PA 4.984
10 5 Labyrinth Escape Games Nampa ID 4.982
11 NA Minervium Escape Games Davis CA 4.981
12 NA Escape Rooms Unlocked Punta Gorda FL 4.981
13 8 Steal and Escape San Diego CA 4.981
14 17 Timed Out Charlotte NC 4.980
15 7 FOX-N-OTTER Arden NC 4.980
16 12 Escape Room St Pete – Outerlife Studios Saint Petersburg FL 4.980
17 13 Exit Puzzles Escape Room Olympia WA 4.980
18 14 Escape LOL Cantonment FL 4.978
19 15 Cold War Escape Room Ormond Beach FL 4.978
20 16 Imagine Escape Games Tampa FL 4.976


By  Kimberly Burk 180

Making Great Escapes

Isolated-room mysteries appeal to players who enjoy employing logic, solving puzzles and using all five senses.



ENTHUSIASTS call them escape rooms, but at Eleventh Hour Enigma in Tulsa, the doors aren’t locked and nobody is tied up. Instead, players work in teams to advance toward the exit by using their brains … and a few other body parts.

“You get together a group of friends, co-workers or family members,” says Melisa McCelvey, president of the attraction. “You have to complete the mission in a set amount of time by solving mysteries and riddles.”

Parts of the game rely on the power of observation, but logical and sequential skills also come in handy. Players might find themselves using all their senses.

Tino Pascuzzi, co-owner of Sanctuary Escape in Oklahoma City, says he and business partner Louie Hernandez offer an “extremely immersive” experience.

“We are very much a detail-oriented, set design adventure game,” he says.

 Eleventh Hour has two games. In Tulsa Time, players enact roles of law officers trying to save the city from attack. Winchester’s Widow is set in 1906 San Jose, California, as players attend a ball, and the mansion they’re in is changed forever.

ESCAPE ROOMS HAVE BECOME A POPULAR ACTIVITY THROUGHOUT OKLAHOMA.
PHOTOS COURTESY ELEVENTH HOUR ENIGMA		 Sanctuary Escape, near Frontier City on Interstate 35, has games called The Lost Dutchman’s Mine and La Famiglia, a nod to Pascuzzi’s Italian heritage. Pascuzzi says The Lost Dutchman is based on a real-life miner who wandered into the Superstition Mountains in Arizona and was never heard from again.

“The Dutchman is a little more physical,” he says. “You may get a little dusty; you may get a little wet.”  

Eleventh Hour is in Tulsa’s up-and-coming Pearl District, so “we get a fair amount of traffic from people coming into town for concerts and also from convention tourists,” McCelvey says. “We had a family recently from Los Angeles. Every time they go to a new town, they find an escape room.”

McCelvey loves the universal appeal.

“A woman came in who was celebrating her 84th birthday [and] brought the four generations behind her,” she says. “There is a demand for an activity that appeals to multiple generations.”

McCelvey is working on a game with a World War I spy theme, and Pascuzzi is developing two new games, one of which “will be replayable up to five times. You can be one of five characters and your tasks are completely different.” More games will be added because not many people want to play the same one twice.

Eleventh Hour is open Wednesday and Thursday evenings, all day on weekends and other times by appointment (eleventhhourenigma.com). Sanctuary is open daily (thesanctuaryokc.com/escape). Rooms should be booked in advance, and most games last about an hour. The ideal team size ranges from four to six people.

“When people finish the game,” McCelvey says, “I always want to be out here to give them a high-five. You can feel their sweaty palms. [It] is a real adrenaline rush.”

The Tulsa Voice
Riddle me this

Tulsa’s Eleventh Hour Enigma

BY KRIS ROSE
 

 
 
 
Eleventh Hour Enigma, Tulsa’s newest escape room

Eleventh Hour Enigma, Tulsa’s newest escape room

GREG BOLLINGER

The Victorian style gold lettering on the facade of Eleventh Hour Enigma entices.

Follow the clues. Solve the mystery. Unlock the mystery. Beat the clock.

You definitely want to know what’s going on inside.

Eleventh Hour Enigma is an escape room—an immersive, crime-thriller experience in which participants play detectives using clues to solve puzzles before a bomb takes out downtown Tulsa. The room, called Tulsa Time, is Tulsa-themed, so brush up on your local history beforehand. You will also need “a logic person, a math person, and a thinking-outside-of-the-box person, for your dream team,” said co-owner Mel McCelvey.

For some, escape rooms function as a fun activity that brings people closer. For others, they offer an actual escape from technology and social media, a way to interact in the real world. There’s also the novelty of something more challenging than a night out at the bar, seeing the same folks, and hearing the same songs on the jukebox. Eleventh Hour Enigma celebrates curiosity, adventure, and friendship.

Escape room enthusiasts are also close cousins to haunt enthusiasts. In fact, they share the same trade show, TransWorld Halloween & Attractions show in St. Louis, each year.

“When escape rooms first started out, most were just an office building and one regular room,” said McCelvey.

Eleventh Hour has definitely raised the bar. Even the instructional video room is decorated with Art Deco, Victorian, and steampunk artifacts. From marbled floors to gold-framed blueprints of various gizmos, everything has been thought out, especially the puzzles.

For those of you who consider yourselves escape room experts, this isn’t an easy one. Don’t despair—each group gets a game master who will give as many or as few hints as required. A tip: You will need hints. Eleventh Hour has only been open a short time, and only a dozen or so groups have gone through. So far, no group has escaped! (By which I mean beaten the room. Eleventh Hour Enigma does allow you to leave.) If this cranks up your desire to be the first to solve the room, you can book Wednesday–Sunday (Mondays and Tuesdays are by private appointment only). You will have one hour to solve the room, which seems like plenty of time—until you look up and realize you only have twenty minutes left to solve the remaining puzzles.

McCelvey and her husband and co-owner Darby Thomas hope to eventually have three to four escape rooms.  If their Tulsa Time room is any indication, forthcoming rooms should be amazing. The next will be based on the famous Sarah Winchester house, which legend holds was kept under constant construction because of Winchester’s belief that supernatural forces would come after her due to the many deaths caused by Winchester rifles. Others say the building was one giant Masonic puzzle. McCelvey and Thomas are running with the latter theory. The possibilities are endless...

[Click here to continue reading the article]

Tulsa Kids
Entertaining Teen Relatives in Tulsa?

No problem.

BY JULIE WENGER WATSON
 

 
 
 
The Boathouse at Gathering Place.

The Boathouse at Gathering Place.

Along with turkey, parades and plenty of football, Thanksgiving often means an influx of relatives and a scramble to entertain them. While adults may be content to help in the kitchen or sprawl in front of the television, entertaining teenagers – our own and those of our guests - can present more of a challenge. Fortunately, Tulsa offers plenty of options, many of which are free, and can appeal to every age.

Gathering Place

A $450 million gift from George Kaiser Family Foundation and numerous other donors, this amazing 70-acre park in the heart of Tulsa is open seven days a week from 9 a.m.-10 p.m. Entrance to the park is free. Sports equipment rents for a small fee, and there are food and beverages available for purchase at several locations. On a cold day, take some board games or a book to the beautiful Williams Lodge with its fireplace and huge windows offering a great view of the park. The sports courts at the southern end of the park are the perfect spot for a game of basketball or volleyball, and the nearby Skate Bowl and BMX Pump Tracks are ideal for participants and spectators alike. In addition to these daytime activities, “Lumino us!”, a light show, begins at 9 p.m. with a colorful display on Peggy’s Pond. On Nov. 17, enjoy a special New Orleans’ influenced show with performances from Tulsa’s Count Tutu, and Louisiana’s Dirty Dozen Brass Band and Dumpstaphunk, all free on the QuikTrip Great Lawn beginning at 4 p.m. For more information, visit www.gatheringplace.org. Check out Guthrie Green, a sister park located in the Tulsa Arts District, for other free, family friendly activities. www.guthriegreen.com.

Climb Tulsa

A state-of-the-art indoor climbing gym at 32nd & Yale, Climb Tulsa features two floors of climbing walls and the tallest (and longest!) indoor slack line – think tightrope - in the U.S. This 17,000-square foot facility has close to 20,000-square feet of vertical climbing walls and is one of the largest climbing gyms in the country. You don’t have to be an expert to participate. Beginners are welcome, and the climbing routes are color-coded and graded. Climb Tulsa is open seven days a week and offers gear rental, classes, private coaching and day passes. For additional details, visit www.climbtulsa.com.

BA Ninja Warrior

Not only does this Broken Arrow gym offer American Ninja Warrior training, you can also polish your bull-riding skills under the same roof. Created by Venn Johns, a former US National Team gymnast, professional bull rider and two-time American Ninja Warrior competitor, the gym features ninja warrior training, open gym sessions, personal training and parkour instruction. While there are several gym membership options, single drop-in class are also available. More information at www.baninjawarrior.com.

Shuffles

Shuffles is a relatively new addition to the Tulsa Arts District. A café with a full service restaurant, Shuffles also features coffee, adult beverages, and a separate milkshake menu. A fee of $6 per person provides unlimited access to over 700 board games – from the classics to contemporary favorites. Prices are higher at “peak” hours on Friday and Saturday evenings. There are even “navigators” on site to guide your game selections. www.shufflestulsa.com

Escape Rooms

With escape rooms like The Escape Tulsa, The Safe House and Eleventh Hour Enigma, participants play detective, using clues to solve puzzles and challenges in order to escape from a “locked” room before time runs out. Each room has a different setting and a different story. It’s an immersive, collaborative and interactive experience set against elaborately decorated and themed rooms. Most of the escape rooms allow kids of all ages to participate, as long as there is an adult with the group. Pricing varies from a flat fee for up to a certain number of players per room to a fee for each participant.

Other Options

While there isn’t enough space to list all of the local entertainment options, here are a few more notables. Tulsa is an art city. Philbrook and Gilcrease offer wonderful exhibits all year (and special holiday events), but also consider places like Living Arts, ahha Tulsa, and 108 Contemporary in the Tulsa Arts District for a change of pace. The Jenks Aquarium and the Tulsa Zoo are always great outings for families and kids, and the Tulsa Botanic Garden and Turkey Mountain should be on everyone’s list for an outdoor adventure. Don’t think that teens are too old for these spots! If the weather isn’t cooperating, the Dust Bowl in the Blue Dome District is the perfect spot to while away an afternoon eating and bowling. For more teen-friendly activities and events, check out our TulsaKids calendar!