Escape rooms are all the rage these days, having quickly become a popular activity for groups of friends or coworkers.
Here’s the concept: you and a few friends are locked in a room and must solve a series of puzzles to “escape” before the timer runs out. The rooms themselves often have themes upon which its design and puzzles are based.
The craze has spread to Jacksonville, with several escape rooms popping up around the city in the past few years.
We’ve got a collection of a few escape rooms in Jacksonville, along with a quick summary of what they have to offer.
The Great Escape Room
11651 Central Pkwy #103
The Great Escape Room, located on Central Pkwy. near I-295, houses multiple escape rooms for a group of up to 12 friends to enjoy.
If you want to play with just your friends, you’ll need to have at least 10 people there (or purchase 10 tickets). Otherwise, you’ll go along with anyone else who’s signed up to play at the time.
It also offers the ability, by appointment only, for offices to bring up to 50 to 60 workers in to play as a team-building exercise.
Its Jacksonville location is one of four in Florida, and 13 nationwide. The company claims that only 20% of groups are able to escape before time runs out.
The location offers multiple different themed rooms, but you can only do each room once. Tickets cost around $28 each, with discounts offered for purchases of more than 10 tickets at a time.
One Way Out
8011 Philips Highway, Suite 3
One Way Out is a locally-based escape room venue that opened earlier this year. It started out as a room in the founders’ house for friends to enjoy, eventually growing to a full-scale location off of Philips Highway.
It offers three different themed escape rooms: one based on saving a friend from a college stalker, one where you race to save a friend at the hospital, and one where you try to escape from jail. They range in difficulty level from moderate to extreme.
The venue lets you play with as few as two people, and as many as eight. Like The Great Escape Room, it offers the ability to hold corporate events such as a team-building event.
Tickets for their rooms cost $25 per person.
Mind Bender Escape Games
1500 Beach Blvd #212 (Jax Beach)
Mind Bender Escape Games is another locally-based escape room venue, located just over the Intracoastal near TacoLu.
It offers four different themes: Captain Mayhem’s Revenge, The Jewel Heist, The Wood Shed, and Jack the Ripper. Each room can hold 10 except Jack the Ripper, which is meant for four people. They’ll match you with others if needed, and they also welcome individuals to come and join a group.
If you want to play with just your friends, you’ll need to buy your tickets in advance online to reserve your timeslot and room. Like the others, they offer the ability to rent out rooms for private events in advance.
The venue has a leaderboard on their website, with pictures of the winning teams as well as a few special recognitions at the top.
Tickets are $30 a person for each room except The Wood Shed, which is $33.
Coming Soon
In addition to these three venues, two other escape rooms are coming to Jacksonville. Breakout Escape Games, another national chain, will open soon at 7999 Philips Highway. American Escape Rooms, also a chain, hasn’t yet announced its future location. With the trend continuing to grow, we can probably expect them to keep popping up for the foreseeable future.
