The Bakersfield Escape Room opened its doors on April 13 to prospective customers looking to challenge themselves mentally and physically in the company’s aptly named “Escape” rooms. The Bakersfield Escape Room is located on 3616 Coffee Road, Suite C, in the Rosedale area of Bakersfield.

The day opened with a brief luncheon for the press, which was purely informational and introduced us to the benefactors of the escape room and the acting manager. Then the owners cut the red ribbon, signaling the opening of their establishment to customers.

However, before the public got in on the action, my fellow members of the press and I had the chance to experience a few different rooms for ourselves.

The escapees consist of teams of no less than two but no more than six, and each is charged $20 dollars for the hour. There are three rooms in total at the Bakersfield location, R.E.S.C.U.E., Winter Fall, and the room this reporter had the pleasure to try and escape, the Crimson Room.

In the R.E.S.C.U.E. room, a young girl has gone missing and a tactical response team has been formed to find her. While looking for the kidnappers, your team discovers an abandoned warehouse, you must search the building and find anything that could lead to her rescue. Threats of a bomb are found and time is running out. The Winter Fall rooms puts you in the shoes of a covert rescue team foraging through mysterious clues and circumstances to find a missing MI6 agent and who was responsible for his going missing.

I, however, was a participant in the newest, and in my opinion, the most challenging Crimson room, which consisted of captured pirates escaping a brig and finding lost treasure.

In the Crimson room, myself and fellow inmates were shackled together in a dark room with nothing but an assortment of chests containing written clues to help us navigate through our escape.

Not to give too much away, let’s just say your mental fortitude will be tested from the start, considering they put the key in the most obvious of spots, making it near impossible to find, of course.

Trust me when I tell you this is not something for those who do not like dark places or enclosed spaces because frankly, being trapped in a room for an hour scares me in my actual life.

These escape rooms, however, are fully-monitored, and escapees are free to leave at any time. Still, that feeling you get of being locked away with nowhere to go is kind of humbling.

I felt a sense of urgency and excitement that I could never get in my normal life.

We were able to travel back to a time where there was no technology (minus the TV screen giving you hints), and people had to use ingenuity to solve their problems. My brain was tested and to be honest, so was my pride as someone who sees himself as a somewhat partially educated member of society.

In the beginning, we were only given half of the original allotted time of an hour, and after 30 minutes we were still trapped, but not deterred.

As a group, we decided we needed to finish this because frankly, we were only two clues away from finishing, and pride won us over.

What started as a rag-tag group of journalists became a cohesive collective of minds focused on one goal: escape.

We finished the room with no more than one minute remaining, becoming the first group to do so in Bakersfield considering the Crimson Room is brand new.

I highly recommend paying a visit to the Bakersfield Escape Room. They have great service and the atmosphere is subtle and very family friendly. For more information on the Bakersfield Escape Room, visit the Facebook page or their website at bakersfieldescaperoom.com.