BreakOut: Did we make it?

Ever since my first escape room experience, I’ve been dying to try out other escape rooms out there. I had a crazy amount of fun last time which I still cannot get over 6 months later. So I’ve been raring to try another escape room experience for quite a long time and I finally succeeded to go last Thursday. My friends and I went to try out one of the most talked about escape rooms in the city, BreakOut.

BreakOut is the first escape room experience in Egypt. It has 4 rooms with 4 different themes of varying difficulty levels: Public Toilet, Prison Cell, Cursed Tomb and The Lab. I have no idea what’s the difficulty level of each room but we’ve been warned that The Lab isn’t the room for beginners, however we didn’t listen… Of course, once you get locked in the room, you only have 60 minutes to escape. There are no pauses and no time extensions. 60 minutes are all you have to break out from BreakOut (get it? Haha).

Before we stepped foot into the room, we were blindfolded and guided into the room individually; I was the first to go in (the first bait). We weren’t briefed about the theme of the room beforehand so I didn’t know what to expect. So imagine how I felt when I was told to stay at a spot and meet scary name whilst being blindfolded. My heart instantly dropped to the floor and I held my own hands so no one can touch them. I literally screamed out loud, “DO NOT TOUCH ME OR EVEN COME NEAR ME”. Once my friends came into the room, I felt safer but we were still communicating in loud voices and screams… not because we couldn’t hear each other, but because everything seemed so intense while we were blindfolded.

When we were asked to take our blindfolds off, the 60-minute countdown started on the screen, the nerve-wrecking music played in the background and our geeky mode turned on (or at least we thought it was). The first thing we did was inspect the whole room; the door(s), the drawers, the cupboards, the locks and chains so we had a general idea of what we had to go through. The theme of the room was really cool; I mean, I’ve seen how my skin looked like under the phosphorescent lighting. The setting was very simple, yet very challenging as well. There were locks, keys, clues and codes to decipher. I liked that we had to use our senses to figure out a combination to a lock; I now know how powerful my smelling sense is (not haha).

Throughout those 60 minutes, we screamed, we laughed and we cried for hints which they weren’t generous with at all. At times, I was running around the room trying to crack codes and at other times, I was beating myself for failing to escape. It literally took us 45 minutes to get past the first riddle. But it was still fun, exciting and very testing to the brainpower. Clearly, we haven’t succeeded in escaping the room but it was definitely memorable.

The staff is very nice and friendly. They walked us through the rest of the riddles that we didn’t have enough time to solve. Before we started, they gave us an application form which we get to draw something on as well so that was cool. I definitely didn’t write the link to my blog to promote myself… (I so did haha) They also asked if you think you’ll escape their room and you choose one of three answers, I chose hell yeah (so humble lol). I’m kind of bummed out that we didn’t win but I’m trying not to think about it much. In case you haven’t noticed already, I’m the kind of person who doesn’t like to lose; I’m a Monica! (virtual high five to all the Friends fans out there)

Every escape room differs from one place to another. Each challenges its players in a different way than the other, yet in a very captivating way. That’s why one should never compare between escape rooms and enjoy each at its own time. I’ve been to Trapped and I’ve been to BreakOut; two different escape rooms of two completely different experiences. BreakOut was an entertaining experience for which we were all hyped up a whole day before it. It was surely what I needed to kick off the weekend I long for from one week to another. I look forward to trying the other three rooms and successfully break free out of them (or at least one of them)! Let me know in the comments below other entertainment facilities in Cairo that I should check out.