‘The Room’ Brings Trending Entertainment to Kane County
The Batavia Chamber of Commerce celebrated the grand opening of The Room Fox Valley with a Ribbon Cutting Ceremony on Friday, April 1 — and it’s pretty safe to say April Fools Day was an appropriate choice for this interesting new entertainment.
The Room is a new entertainment venue located at 160 S. Water Street, Suite B, Batavia. Mayor Jeffery Schielke cut the ribbon with owner, Catherine Arne, and you can see by the feature photo that even the ribbon cutting was far from ordinary.
“Are you tired of the same old dinner and a movie?” The Room asks on its website. “Come try the new entertainment phenomenon sweeping the nation!”
You have to read the slashes in order to get that the room is part murder mystery, part puzzle, part adventure, part “escape room.” Apparently, the whole thing begin as an online game and phone app, and now has crossed over into REAL LIFE BUSINESS.
Escape rooms first were made popular in Silicon Valley by a group of system programmers in 2006. The mysteries and challenges in the game were inspired by the works of Agatha Christie and became a popular tourist attraction, according to Wikipedia. The “Real Escape Game” then took off in Japan, and the rest is history.
In 2015, there were more 2,800 escape room venues worldwide.
According to www.theroomfoxvalley.com, the rules are pretty simple: You and your teammates have 60 minutes to find clues and solve a mind-boggling series of story-based puzzles by working together and thinking outside the box.
“No outside knowledge, special skills or physical prowess are necessary; this is an event for anyone — teen to centenarian — with a sense of adventure and imagination,” the website says. “Here’s your chance to be the hero-detective instead of just watching them on screen!
“Are you ready to test your mettle against the fiendishly clever Puzzlemasters?”
SOURCE: Batavia Chamber of Commerce, www.theroomfoxvalley.com
