Take a mini-escape!
The owners of a pirate-themed miniature golf course in Red Hook have launched a new adventure: a trio of tiny escape rooms. Each of the three chambers — a space station, a haunted house, and an abandoned ancient temple — holds five people at a time, and visitors have just 25 minutes to get out. The shrunken version of the popular game rooms, which typically give groups of up to 12 people an hour to solve a series of puzzles, lets people try the escape room experience without making a big commitment, said the owner of Shipwrecked.
“It’s for people who have never done it before to kind of dip their toe in,” said Ryan Powers, who lives in Greenwood Heights. “It’s much easier to go in and get a taste for it — you don’t have to commit to an hour-long experience or being with a bunch of strangers.”
And if the 25-minute sample gets you hooked, the other two escape rooms are waiting right there, said Powers.
“If you like doing the first one, you can hop in and do other the other two if you want,” he said.
Powers and his co-owner, who both have a background building Broadway sets, built elaborate lagoons, islands, and an 18th-century town for the mini-golf portion of Shipwrecked, but they chose to ditch the pirate theme for the ’wreck rooms, in order to provide some relief from the nautical immersion.
“It’s for people who come here who don’t like pirate-themed things, and want something to do as well,” said Powers.
Creating the abandoned temple room gave Powers an excuse to include an Indiana Jones skeleton, he said, and adding a spooky — but not gory — haunted house area was a no-brainer, he said.
“We definitely want a haunted one; come Halloween that is going to be super popular. Our haunted is more fun-haunted than gory-haunted,” he said.
The miniature escape rooms involve some special effects and theatrical lighting to really challenge visitors, said Powers.
“There’s a lot of technology involved, rather than just a lock and key — we like technology,” he said.
For now, the three mini escape rooms are only open Friday through Sunday, but eventually will be open six days as week, the same as the rest of the mini-golf course, said Powers. He advises making a reservation in advance, and there need to be at least two participants.
Escape Deck at Shipwrecked [621 Court St. at Bay Street in Red Hook, (718) 852–4653, www.shipw
