Escape Long Beach – Good Escape Rooms Come in Small Packages

As Los Angeles starts to gradually reopen, escape room enthusiasts are no doubt eager to get locked in someone else’s room for a change. Just before COVID-19 put the country on lockdown I was able to check out the relatively new Escape Long Beach facility in, you guessed it, Long Beach, and if you feel safe doing so I definitely recommend checking them out. While the company name may not be the most creative, the two rooms they offer (The Lab and The Queen) more than make up for it.

Single-Chamber Escape Rooms Can, in Fact, Be Great

Most of the escape rooms I’ve enjoyed involve two, three, or even four chambers. It’s pretty standard practice to use the movement between them as an opportunity for visual storytelling and to physically space the puzzles out to make sure that participants have room to maneuver as they hunt for clues. Trying to pack things all into one chamber can have mixed results, particularly for 4-6 player teams like I typically take on rooms with. But both The Lab and The Queen manage to defy my expectations and somehow cram a full hour’s worth of puzzles into a single chamber in such a way that, while it might at times have felt a little cramped, we were never impeded in our efforts to get out.

This comes down to a very efficient use of space, both in terms of floor plan and puzzle construction. Almost everything you need to interact with is set against, or even inside, the room’s walls, leaving as much room as possible for participants to maneuver. Many of the puzzles also require participants to be spread out, minimizing the “clumping” that can happen when you’re all standing over a single object or clue. While The Lab, being the smaller of the two rooms, might still get a little claustrophobic with 5 or 6 players, both are perfectly fine to do with a 4-person team.

Quality over Quantity

Few, if any, bike locks are to be found in Escape Long Beach. Both The Lab and The Queen instead rely on thematically-appropriate props and locking mechanisms for the puzzles offered, and there are some really clever touches.

The “secret entrance” into The Queen (set on the Queen Mary) is literally a secret entrance, for instance, while in The Lab you’ll use actual laboratory equipment (including a somewhat dated desktop PC) to thwart a deadly biological attack. In both rooms, it’s clear that a lot of thought has gone into creating an environment that feels right for the premise and has plenty of personality.

What helps keep things from getting claustrophobic, though, is that often a puzzle would require one person to enter the solution while others were relaying it from opposite ends of the chamber or getting to work on the next step of the process. The puzzles do have a mostly linear flow, but there’s usually more than one thing that can be worked on at a given moment, and things are positioned so that you rarely have more than two people in a single part of the room unless it’s the final, climactic puzzle.

Immersion Matters

One aspect of escape room design that’s often easy to overlook is how you set players up before letting them into the room. And in fairness it’s not necessary for the participants; a few quick sentences about the premise delivered along with the rules usually does the job. And even once the room begins, you can still offer a great experience without putting a ton into the narrative.

But guests notice when a room goes the extra mile to create a new world. The Queen leads off with one of the better pre-room setups I’ve come across; they give a well-written bit of backstory, assign each player a role, and hand out character-appropriate props that will each help with one of the puzzles inside. But both The Queen and The Lab also intersperse plenty of story throughout the rooms themselves, giving players a reason to feel invested in completing the room (besides saving their own skins).

Worth the Trip, but Bring Veterans

Escape Long Beach’s rooms are meant for more experienced teams, though they offer the ability to adjust the difficulty when booking to make things easier for newer groups – or harder for those who want an even steeper challenge. Both rooms can accommodate 2-6 players, but given that they’re on the smaller side and fairly challenging, I’d recommend aiming for a 4-person team with at least one experienced player.

Regardless of who you bring, though, Escape Long Beach offers creative, well-made, and fun escapes that are well worth a look. Tickets are $35/person for either room and can be bought on their website here.

You can contact Escape Long Beach for more information via the form or phone number on listed on their contact page. You can also reach our or follow them on Facebook here.