Grab your friends and take part in a very unique experience...if you dare
If you’ve ever wondered what it’d be like to take part in a prison escape, become an expert sleuth, or survive the apocalypse and find a cure, you can do just that at Escape Experience Chattanooga on Rossville Avenue.
As someone who has followed The Walking Dead since day one, I was excited to say the least about taking part in the Vaccine experience with my husband.
Time to find out if we’re calm, cool and collected in the mother of all scenarios: post-apocalyptic survival. Below is a first-hand account of the heart-racing hour spent in the farmhouse.
It’s the year 2035 and 90 percent of the population has been wiped out from a deadly disease. My husband, myself, and two other couples we’ve found along the way are part of the lonely 10 percent of survivors.
We’ve listened to our radio for weeks and weeks to hear nothing but static…until four days ago, when a man’s voice comes over the airway. He claims to have supplies, medicine, and shelter, we just have to make it to his farmhouse in the valley. It didn’t take long to find it, the old house standing alone in a wide field, the grass blowing violently in the approaching storm winds.
Our group stands outside the door to the farmhouse, white, weathered wood framing the door, paint peeling off in pieces. Above the door in bright red spray paint (we hope), is the word VACCINE, an arrow inviting us in. We open the door to see a pitch black kitchen, periodically lit by lightning flickering outside, thunder and rain beating down on the dilapidated roof.
Each of us armed with a flashlight, we enter, and the door locks behind us. A red timer hangs above the door. It seems we were lied to; there are no supplies, no medicine. Instead we’ve walked into a madman’s lair, a collection of infected bodies filling the walls to serve as experiments.
Why? We have no idea. We only know we have one hour to escape the farmhouse with the vaccine that will cure the remaining population, and, ultimately, save ourselves.
Inside the experience our group scoured cupboards and drawers for clues and supplies, solved math puzzles, deciphered riddles, but in the end, we succumbed to our infectious surroundings and did not escape in the time allotted.
Going in, I expected it to be a lot simpler that it turned out to be. The set, the sounds, it all makes you feel as if you’re truly in an apocalyptic experience. You know just as little about your environment when you walk in as you would if you’d actually stumbled upon this house. It’s a challenge, but definitely the most enjoyable way I’ve spent an hour in a long time.
And that’s just one of the currently three, soon to be four, experiences available at Escape Experience Chattanooga. In C-Block Prison Break, you and your group are falsely accused and sentenced to a maximum security prison.
Handcuffed, you and your group have one hour until the guard returns, now is your time to escape.
If living out an hour as Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys sounds like more your style, try your hand at The Inheritance Mystery Room where you and your group must find your uncle’s final wishes and escape with his life’s work before “they” do?
Coming soon is The Bunker. Final details are still being sorted out, but the idea is an automated nuclear missile system has suddenly entered launch mode and it’s up to you and your group to stop it.
The set for The Bunker looks as if it has been built into the side of a mountain, rocks jutting out around the entrance, which is a steel door designed to survive even the harshest of conditions (or explosions).
Regardless of which one you choose, prepare to be sucked into the most surreal hour of your life. It’s quite the experience.
Escape Experience
Open Daily, 9am to 11pm
1800 Rossville Avenue
(423) 551-3306
escapeexperiencechattanooga.com