Activities for Teens: Escape Room Lockdown Ottawa

Like most high school students, I have a firm separation between fun and tests of intelligence. A math quiz is not exactly my idea of a relaxing Friday evening, and it doesn’t take much thinking to go to the movies. Work and play don’t mix for me… with one exception. I find escape rooms to be a thrilling test of the mind that I can enjoy with friends. That's why I chose Lockdown Ottawa’s Trudeau Towers for my most recent outing.

As soon as we entered the building, we were excited to check out the escape room. My friends and I climbed down the metallic stairs in the windowless structure and checked in. We were then taken to another floor and shown a video about the story behind our escape room. The plot for us was that we were visiting Trudeau Towers, Ottawa’s newest luxury hotel. The guide then showed us into what appeared to be an elevator and closed the door.

Suddenly, the lights went out as we were left confused for around 10 seconds. When they turned on, an announcer over the speakers revealed that our elevator was stuck and we had 45 minutes to diffuse a bomb before it went off. Just like that, our puzzle-solving began.

Obviously, I cannot reveal how to solve the escape room or give too many details. The clues consisted of riddles and various creative contraptions. Each clue lead to the combination key of a lock that would open up another clue. We had to work together as a team to figure out how to solve the escape room.

As the game progressed, we used the walkie-talkie for one of our limited hints and eventually opened a trap door connected to a crawl space. As the clock wound down and the bomb came closer to detonating, we organized ourselves into different roles to solve the clues more efficiently. Just as we were close to solving the second last clue, the door opened and our guide revealed that the bomb had gone off. 

While we weren’t able to escape before the clock ran out, we had a great time solving clues and working together. We were impressed by the creative ways we were supposed to find lock combinations and how engaging the design of our escape room ones. My friends and I will be sure to check out another one of Lockdown Ottawa’s escape rooms sometime in the future. 

Lockdown Ottawa offers 5 different escape rooms, each with different themes. For a Halloween themed escape, check out their CarnEvil room. The other available themes are hockey, time travel and aliens. Unlike many other escape rooms, the cost for these rooms are a flat rate of $109+HST regardless of number of players (which ranges from 2-6.) For more information, click here.

David is a fifteen-year-old aspiring adventure and travel writer living in Ottawa.  Skydiving is on his bucket list. He received a complimentary ticket for this post, but all views are his own.

Room Escape - Ottawa Escape Room

We’re exploring the city and finding great activities for teens and tweens this summer, and this week we were invited to try out Room Escape.

My family loves escape rooms! Puzzling things out is fun and exciting for them - and Room Escape was no exception. The whole family was impressed with the quality of the room, and the elaborate mechanisms, and loved the detailed story of the room. And we escaped the 4.5/5 difficulty room with 20 minutes to spare (but that’s because we have so many great puzzlers in the family!)

The room we did was called Undermined and we delved deep into a mine to find out what happened to geological genius Dr Jackson.

How it works:

When you arrive, you are first asked to wait in a holding area until your room is ready. You are then brought into a small room and the rules of the escape room are explained to you. You are then introduced to the story you are going to be solving.

Once you are in the room, you have one hour to solve the room - there is a tv screen in the room that keeps time for you. You have a walkie-talkie to ask for unlimited clues, and you are also given the option of a clue hint sheet (my family was NOT interested in that, but had I been with a different group I imagine we happily would have taken the sheet and been glad that there aren’t official penalties for asking for hints.)

What you actually do:

No spoilers are included here - these are random numbers before we solved it :)

Once you’re in the room there are clues that will allow you to open up ways to find more clues. There are lots of padlocks - some that require keys, some that need number codes and some that require letter codes. There are many different kinds of puzzles, that include figuring out patterns, putting things together in the right order, and noticing clues around the room.

The rooms can feel quite small if you’re a larger group, but the more you solve, the more rooms open up and the more you can spread out.

What we really like:

Having done a bunch of escape rooms before what we really liked about Room Escape are the elaborate setups. The rooms at Room Escape seem more permanent than at some of the other escape room places where they change them out more often and it felt like that meant the components were more elaborate.

There were a lot of really great effects that made you feel like things were moving or like you were actually in a mine. There were also moving parts and one of us got to ride in a mine cart!

All the kids commented about the elaborate mechanisms and that the puzzles were challenging but fun.

What we liked a bit less:

If there are more than 3-4 of you, those that are less competitive may be left behind as there isn’t a lot of room to get involved. This is partially just the nature of escape rooms though, and not so much about Room Escape specifically.

Overall it was a great outing and all the teens would happily return to puzzle through more rooms!

Where: 1860 Bank Street, #3B

Cost: $29/person

Hours: Monday/Tuesday - 5pm - 10pm
Wednesday/Sunday - 10am - 10pm

Check out their website for more information and to book in a time to escape yourself!

Note: we were gifted passes to experience the escape room but all thoughts are our own.