Creative Director Roy Davis here with (hopefully) one last post before our grand opening:
After months of hard work, we finally released our contractors, electricians, engineers and painters. They’d done an amazing job bringing Midnight on the Bayou to life and we (incorrectly) believed that we didn’t need them anymore.
Oh how wrong we were.
We realized belatedly that we were missing a very important piece of technology. I can’t be more specific without giving anything away, but I will say it involved electricity and drywall and magnets and aligning unaligned joints.
Our first instinct was to just create a simpler work-around but…this tech was part of a clue chain finale, and it was super in-character for one of the room’s characters. We decided to try and keep it.
The only person remaining on-site with any electrical experience was our mad scientist, but he was busy getting the room’s computers to talk nicely to each other (they were occasionally getting in arguments and refusing to talk). So that left me, with my two advanced degrees in creative writing, and my brother, with a background in management, to tackle the tech. What could go wrong?
Well, for starters, the parts we ordered had instructions in Chinese. (Oh how we longed for that little, universal Ikea man.)
Then we realized the section of drywall we were working with wasn’t wired for electricity, so we had to make a small hole and do most of the hook up by feel. (Every time I stuck my arm in that hole I thought of all the horror movies where an idiot sticks their arm in a hole. I’d also just watched the new It trailer, with the part with Georgie and the storm drain…)
Then we realized two wooden frames that we thought were flush and aligned weren’t, so we had to cut wood, add wood, cut wood, etc. again and again, in tiny increments till we could bring the surfaces together.
Did I mention the instructions were in Chinese?
(My brother making good use of his environmental science degree. No photos, please!)
Finally, everything was mounted, wired and aligned. All that remained was to push the shiny red button. I let Justin do the honors….
And it worked! The thing did the thing!
Red Lantern enters beta testing soon. Sign up for our mailing list for testing invites, and you can come push that shiny red button yourself to see what happens.
(Note: Real electricians have checked, and reworked, our work and determined everything safe and compliant. No coyotes were harmed in the building of this escape room.)
Now, read about our process of making a swamp.
