Central Escapes brings puzzling challenges to Mount Pleasant
Mount Pleasant residents finally have an opportunity to live out their fantasies of being great detectives — if only for an hour.
Central Escapes, located at 806 S. Mission St., challenges groups of two to eight people with a seemingly simple task: “escape” from a locked room within one hour. The catch is, the room is filled from top to bottom with a seemingly endless amount of puzzles, logic problems and clues that need to be solved to unlock the door.
Central Escapes opened in Mount Pleasant on Jan. 27. Admission is $25 per person. For Carlene Northon, owner of Central Escapes, the business is the result of a life-long enthusiasm for puzzles and thought problems.
“(Central Escapes) is something different for students to do to get out of their (dorm) rooms,” Northon said. “For people with family and friends looking for something to do on an afternoon, they can come and hang out for an hour with no cell phones and be forced to interact with one another and have fun.”
The origins of Northon’s fascination with puzzles can be traced back to junior high, when her mother got sick and she lived with her aunt for a couple of weeks. During Easter, Northon’s aunt had her and her cousins hunt for their Easter eggs by following a series of clues.
The experience left an impression of Northon, and when she had her daughter years later, she began to hide her Easter basket with the number of clues to its location corresponding to her daughter’s age.
During a trip to New York when her daughter reached adulthood, Northon’s family visited an “escape room” puzzle, which rekindled her interest in puzzles. Northon began periodically setting up mock escape rooms in her basement for friends and family to go through.
One day while returning home from work, Northon heard a radio advertisement night classes offered by the Small Business Development Center, which she signed up for with the purpose of turning her dreams of developing an escape room into reality.
As it’s currently set up, Central Escapes’ escape room centers around a scenario titled “The Big Game.” The set-up follows a storyline in which participants play the role of people who have had their tickets to a football game stolen. With only an hour before the game starts, they have to decipher a room full of clues and locks to find the tickets and escape.
When coming up with the “Big Game” puzzle scenario, Northon drew from the passion for football she shares with her husband. Northon got the idea for the upcoming classroom setting after consulting with her daughter about what should come next for the room.
Northon said she plans to offer each themed room for about six months before switching them out. The second theme, “Classroom Conundrum,” is scheduled to open before April 20.
A Halloween-themed room will be opened shortly before October, Northon said.
As of March 2018, 42 teams have gone through the escape room, with the rate of successful “escapes” within the one-hour time-limit being under 36 percent — just 16 teams, Northon said.
“The more people you bring (on your team), the more people you have that can help solve clues and spread out around the room,” Northon said. “A lot of times you’ll get a group of two or three people and (solving) all the clues at on time can be overwhelming.”
As of April 2018, the record time for the quickest escape for the “The Big Game” scenario is 40 minutes and 10 seconds, set by a team named “Goike Gryffindors.” In third place is the team of seven called “The Touchdowns,” which escaped the room in early February with a time of 45 minutes and six seconds.
Among “The Touchdowns” was Jacki Fredricks, of Remus, who had been through several escape rooms in Michigan before, though she said Central Escapes is the first one she has completed.
“We had a blast — the puzzles were challenging but doable, so it wasn’t like we were so overwhelmed we didn’t know what to do,” Fredricks said. “I’d definitely go through it again. I can’t wait for (Northon) to get the next room finished.”
