An award-winning Cumbrian escape room is reminding people it’s here to stay as it gears up to create multiple brand new games.
Lakes Escapes, based in Workington, first opened its doors in 2017 and has spent the past eight years bringing puzzles and joy to people from Cumbria and beyond.
Owners Carol, 49, and John Watson, 50, are now getting ready to create multiple new rooms, including Christmas and a witch’s cabin themed games.
But to bring in a new escape room, an existing room has to retire, which Carol said has created a little bit of confusion on social media.
She said: “I’m always so careful, but when you announce new games, some people think you’re closing, because you have to warn people the old game is closing.
“We’ve had quite a few people come in recently thinking we were closing down, but we’re not! We have no plans to go anywhere, we’re building new games, and we’ve always got plans for more.
“We’ve just opened our new game No Place Like Gnome and we’ve got our Christmas game for this year and our witch’s cabin coming up.
“Word of mouth is huge thing for us, but when that word of mouth is telling people we’re shutting, it’s just so damaging.”
Carol added that announcing the retirement of old games allows people to come and enjoy the game before it is no longer available to play.
She said: “Initially there will be a brand new Christmas game in the Diamond Mine room and next year there will be another new game to go in there as well.
“But that is yet to be decided, because we’re in the process of building props for our upcoming witch’s cabin game. That will replace another one of our games, but we are yet to announce that.
“We can’t build them fast enough, we’ve had people in today who’ve just played No Place Like Gnome and we’ve got nothing else new for them just yet, there’s many people waiting for the next new game.”
Over the years, Lakes Escapes has brought a total of 15 different escape rooms to life.
It has so far given people the chance to embark on a casino heist, escape a mine shaft, break out of prison, bring Frankenstein’s monster to life, solve a murder, play Crystal Maze inspired mini games and more.
It’s a business that has also scooped two nominations for the Top Escape Rooms Project Enthusiasts’ Choice Awards and won the TripAdvisor Traveller’s Choice Award every year since it opened.
But it all started when Carol and John stumbled across an escape room for the first time and fell in love with the concept.
John previously worked in finance while Carol worked in business admin before they made the decision to set up their new venture.
She said: “We were away in York one day and we came across an escape game, we’d never heard of them before, so we went and played it and that was it, our love of escape games started there.
“I’m ridiculous, I’m like a dog with a bone, once I get an idea in my head I think that’s it, we’re going to do it.
“So I think it was in February 2017 I thought right, we’re going to open an escape room business in Workington. We registered the business in the March and we opened in the April and we jumped in with both feet.
“But there’s not a lot to do around here and it’s worse now than when we first opened, so we wanted to bring something new to our home town too.”
All of the games and their puzzles and concepts are dreamt up by John – who also builds all of the rooms by hand.
Carol said: “They all come from John’s strange mind! He just gets an idea in his head of what it’s going to be, there’s no written down plans or anything like that and he’ll get the wood and just build it.
“There’s no great planning process, just an end idea and we work backwards from that.
“John doesn’t outsource anything, he builds everything, he buys some electronics and things like that, but otherwise he does it all.
“But we tend to stick to themes everyone loves and knows like being a detective, everyone fancies themself a Sherlock Holmes, and breaking out of prison, it sounds strange to say, but everyone has this weird thing of wanting to be locked up in a prison and to escape it.
“It’s a weird thing humans just seem to want!”
Carol said the building, creation and testing of an escape room often takes months to finish and perfect.
She said: “When you’re designing and building a game, you’ve got to be one step ahead and think right, what is a customer going to do in here, you’ve just got to be one step ahead of all the crazy things people do.
“You’ve also got to start thinking about the Christmas games in July, and our witch’s cabin has been in the making for three months, but it’ll be next year when it’s ready.
“We do internal testing initially to make sure it all makes sense and then we’ll have staff and family test the game to see how other people think things through before we even put a game on sale.”
Carol said hosting an escape room is an experience in itself as customers will do all kinds of weird and wonderful things while playing the game.
Hosts sit and watch players tackle the game through cameras in the rooms where they are able to remotely give hints and clues through a screen in the room to players who may be struggling – or heading completely in the wrong direction.
Carol said the games and their puzzles are also full of surprises – which is fun for both hosts and player teams to experience.
She added: “Every game is different because everybody is different. You can run the same game all day, but every session is completely different, some people just get it and solve the puzzles no problem and others can’t get through to the end.
“But the main thing is everyone has fun trying, people come in and ask oh what’s the fastest time, but it doesn’t matter, it’s your time and your 60 minutes.
“We do have to let people know not to pull things off or lift heavy objects, but people still do, so you’ve got to type fast to send in clues to the room to say all sorts of things like don’t climb into the ceiling!
Carol added that all kinds of groups and people play the rooms – from local families, couples and friend groups, to escape room enthusiasts who tackle all six in a weekend or tourists who come back annually.
Each game lasts 60 minutes and can be played by everyone aged seven and up, with the exception of Diamond Mine, which involves players tackling mini games before the 60 minute escape room begins.
She said: “Because we’ve been open since 2017, we’ve seen people who were pregnant and now bring their kids to play and young teens who are still coming with friends now and you think, my god you’ve grown! It’s great.
“But pensioner groups are funny because they just do not care what people think, they’ll try anything, do anything and say anything.”
The business has also had to adapt to tough external factors including the Covid-19 pandemic and the rising costs of energy bills alongside the cost of living crisis.
But during the pandemic, the team brought their games online to make them playable across the world using 360 photography and software that allows people to play the rooms virtually.
To cut energy costs, the team also had to strategically close the business twice a week during winter, after their energy bills rose by £26,500 in 2022.
It’s a wave the team are still riding – but with new games on the horizon, it’s exciting times for Lakes Escapes.
Carol added: “The best feeling is when you get a group of people and there’s maybe one or two in the group who’ve never played or heard of escape rooms before.
“They’ve been dragged along and they don’t want to be here and would rather be in the pub, but then they get into the game and they’re playing it and loving it, and by the end they’ve enjoyed it so much they want to play another, and that’s the best feeling.”
To keep up with updates on upcoming rooms, you can follow Lakes Escapes on social media.
Players are still able to play Diamond Mine until August 27, after which, it will retire to make way for a new Christmas game.
