The proximity to other social offerings in the city makes Outside the Box’s location on 2 nd Street an ideal one, Andreozzi said. “Absolutely not,” Elaine added and laughed. I asked Raul, who has a military background, and Elaine, who has law enforcement experience, if they felt that their action-packed credentials gave them a leg up in the escape. “We’d love to get our families in here and compete.” They identified the racing option as an experience they would come back for. They had come to Outside the Box to celebrate their 10 th wedding anniversary. Two groups can experience the exact same room-on different floors-to compete to see how quickly each group can decipher the clues and escape.Īfter escaping from the Special Ops room, I caught up with my once-strangers-now-teammates Raul and Elaine. To make the experience even more exhilarating, Outside the Box offers a racing challenge. “These are advanced, and there’s a degree of technology in them that sets us apart.” “One of the things we take pride in is that there’s some pretty interesting electronical components and custom software-things that aren’t entry-level rooms,” Andreozzi said. In addition to the “Special Ops” escape room, Outside the Box currently offers two other rooms: “Outbreak,” where you have to stop a deadly virus from spreading, and “Wanted,” a Wild West-themed game. Outside the Box also puts time and investment into new, compelling rooms to keep people coming back. The space even offers a meeting room so clients can hold a meeting on site. So, we decided to basically triple-at least double-the size of the location so we can cater to large, corporate groups.”Īnd they have, with corporate groups quickly constituting a large portion of their business. “But because there is so much competition, we knew we had to do something different. “When we originally opened, we thought we’d be about the same size as some of our other competitors,” he said. Additionally, it is more than double in size of the competition, he said. Outside the Box’s owner, Benjamin Andreozzi, explained that this sets his escape room apart from others in the area. Many of the steps integrate technologies that make the experience relatable to an action film. “I’ve always been trying to integrate games and education,” he said. He also sends clues into rooms to nudge players when they seem stuck or go down a wrong path. He tweaks steps to ensure the mission is challenging but not impossible. I was a little more prepared for what was coming than the rest of the group, as I had sat down to interview Kelly a few days before.īesides handling Outside the Box’s day-to-day operations, Kelly pays close attention to how groups interact with the games. We had to infiltrate the enemy’s command center and disrupt an impending act of mass destruction. We were part of a covert operations team that had been dropped behind enemy lines, he said. It was their first time, as well.īefore entering the room, Outside the Box’s manager, Sean Michael Kelly, gave us a rundown of the do’s and don’ts, as well as a briefing on our mission. While waiting in the lobby, we met our two team members, Raul and Elaine Otano. Our group, four friends, had reserved our spots on a whim. Once the puzzle is solved, the locked door bursts open, allowing humanity’s saviors to return to their far more mundane lives as accountants or state workers or whatever. Outside the Box is one of a handful of “escape rooms” in central PA, which feature fun, adrenaline-pumping games where small groups of people, locked in a room, work together under intense time pressure to solve a perplexing riddle-often with the fate of mankind at stake. These were the thoughts that bombarded my mind in the final few minutes of my time in Outside the Box Escape Room in downtown Harrisburg. If we could not decipher the final code that needed to be entered into the laptop, the missile would fire, and we would all meet an untimely, tragic end. As we rummaged through helmets, depicted codes and pondered our surroundings for hidden clues-under furniture, in books, in pictures, on maps-it occurred to me that we may not beat the ever-nearing deadline. Without discussing it, the group had split up into pairs, each working on a separate challenge and deep in discussion. I started to become acutely aware of the rising stress levels of the people in the room-strangers and friends. Escape the Ordinary: At Outside the Box Escape Room, the fate of the world is at stake.
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