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Our present to Papa

Apologies at the beginning, I don't have any pictures of this past weekend, so I hope my mom goes in and adds them.

This past weekend was Papa's 50th birthday, and Rebecca and I were determined to get him something special. Papa doesn't love your typical things. He doesn't even necessarily want useful things for his birthday. I have learned that a gift generally has to pass the "cool" test. Whether that's a video game that's cool (even if he won't play it ever), or a T-shirt that is cool, that's going to be something that he will want for his birthday.

We decided to do something a little different. While we were in Poland (said in a snobbish British accent) Rebecca and I tried out escape rooms all over Warsaw. The basic premise is you're locked in a room and have 60 minutes to get out. We probably did six or seven of them while we were there. We did some with WWII themes (I never knew there were so many Enigma machines out there), we did one set up as a music studio, we did another that was Space Odyssey-themed...we got pretty good at figuring them out and working together. My dad has done two or three and LOVES them. If you talk to him a day or two afterwards he'll start to tell you how clever they are and how fun it was. Knowing that, Rebecca and I wanted to build an escape room for Papa, particularly one that was tailored to him.

The first thing we came up with was a theme. The premise of the story was that a couple of statues, the Toperkins and Freddy, that we have picked up throughout our travels came to life and decided to steal the family treasure chest. Hootie, our loyal family cat, caught them trying to escape and trapped them. But Hootie LOVES to eat. So  he's only going to keep them trapped for 60 minutes before his hunger pangs become too strong and he has to go eat, at which point the Toperkins and Freddy will make their escape. This was the premise, but we also used things we knew my dad would love; our Star Trek Catan board, the Way of Kings and Words of Radiance books by Brandon Sanderson...we tried to make it something that he would enjoy.

The key to planning an escape room? You should start at the end. We had a goal (find the statues) and we just had to work our way backwards. It took quite a bit of planning to come up with stuff that would be fun, but still be challenging enough for everyone involved. We tried to come up with clever ways to provide combinations for locks that they would be forced to open and incorporated several different strategies that we had seen in other escape rooms into our plan.

Next was collecting all the things necessary for the game. This took some buying of locks and rope, but also creative work by Rebecca to make a poster with trivia questions, transparencies, and signs for different doors. There was a lot by the end, but it all looked like it would come together.

We had no idea if the room was going to take them 20 minutes or an hour. We tried to make it difficult, but not so difficult that they didn't want to play by the end. Finding out what connections they would have to make inside their head in comparison to the connections given to them were important distinctions we had to discuss, with the end product being there were a few connections no immediately evident with others being a clear path to the end.

The final step happened Saturday when we finally set all of the materials up in the rooms we had chosen. I felt kind of bad because it took us a couple hours and we missed out on spending time with them, but the room looked super good by the end of it. When we brought Papa, Mama, and Glo down and started explaining what was happening, we could tell they were incredibly excited.

The room took them 40 minutes, which means we could have made it harder :-) That being sad, I could tell they needed to think through the room and determine which steps came next, which I really appreciated. It was definitely a hit and offered a good alternative to the typical gift. Everyone had SO MUCH FUN, including us in setting it up! Definitely a worthwhile present, and it passed the "cool" test.

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