Imagine yourself in a sparsely decorated room, with what appears to be just some random junk lying around, and a big digital clock counting down from an hour on the wall. Now imagine that you're locked in that room and have to find enough clues to solve a series of puzzles to find a key in order to escape. As far as you can see, upon first glance, there are no clues anywhere at all in the room. And, you only have 60 minutes to do it. How do you even begin to find your way out?
That's the whole ridiculously fun premise behind Break Out Myrtle Beach and Break Out Charleston. Break Out offers several different "escape rooms" to test your skills. We visited the one in Myrtle Beach, which has rooms featuring Red Beard's Revenge, CSI Myrtle Beach, Serial Killer and Bank Heist. Each has its own scenario and unique series of puzzles. We don't want to say much more than that, because to do so would give away the fun. What they all have in common is that your family or group has to work together to solve the challenges. And believe me, they are hard! I really think I could feel my brain expanding as we tried to figure out the clues and find the key to escape.
Break Out is a great activity for any family, but kids will have the most fun if they're old enough to understand the concept of solving puzzles and can help. The Serial Killer room might be too intense for some school-aged children, but Red Beard's Revenge was perfect for our elementary and middle school-aged kids.
But it wasn't just the children who loved it. My husband and I had a ball, too. It's not many activities out there that really let a family have so much fun working together so closely.
Break Out would also be a fantastic activity for groups of adults. I imagine you'd really get to know how your friends respond to pressure!
Already wildly popular in Europe, escape rooms are a fairly new import to the US. But based on how much fun we had trying to escape from Red Beard's pirate lair, however, it's probably just a matter of time before we're all trying to break out.
