FULL WALK-THROUGH: Our Harry Potter Escape Room!

Instead of a house-wide scavenger hunt for this year's party, John and I upgraded to a Potter-themed Escape Room - and we're never going back.  MWUAHAHAAAAA!

Yep, this thing was a blast to build and a huge hit with our guests. I'm already excited to start on next year's!

We used John's Game Room to set up, and limited ourselves to about half a dozen puzzles to keep the time limit manageable. We had nearly 20 teams to get through the room, so we aimed for a challenge that only lasted about 15 minutes.

Looking back, my only regret is limiting the team sizes, since it seemed like the larger teams of 3-4 had the most fun. (We suggested going in pairs.) These are definitely best done with a group, where you can shout and laugh together!

We put together a video to show you all the cool stuff, ready to see?

Now let me walk you through all the details! I'll also show you how we built everything, and link to some of the key products we used, in case you want to make your own. (Which you totally should.)

 Room overview. This space is only 10X10, so it's quite tiny!

(I know the theming is a little...meh... but we were more focused on the puzzle aspects. Next year I'll do better!)

 

 The other side of the room.

John built a slide-in shelf to cover our large screen TV in the middle of the wall unit:

 

This meant no video games for the final month while we finished prepping the room. :(   

We really sacrificed for this party, you guys.

 

 I had a lot of fun decorating the shelves. Everything here we already had around the house; I just gathered up everything shiny, old, or "wizardy."

Some of these decorations were already here, so that helped:

(This was a happy coincidence: all the artists of these pieces were at the party! House owls by Dennis Hansbury - who just made House-themed BATS, ermergerh. Papercut owl in the back by Charles Thurston, Sirius Black by Bonnie Wong, and the tiny badger figurine by Christie Cox.)

The rest of the stuff I packed up and replaced with more magical themed goodies:

I really like how this lower desk turned out:

That gold box was completely handmade by John, and is my favorite element in the room.

Here's a peek at the inner guts of its construction, see if you can figure out how it works:

John used leftover scraps of wood and trim he had in the garage to make the whole thing.

Ok, on to the first clue!

This logic puzzle is fairly simple, to lull players into a false sense of confidence. ::evil grin:: 

  The Founder portraits are printouts glued to squares of plywood, with twisted wire hangers hot-glued to the back. They're hanging from square-headed nails.

The Clue tells players that the portraits will reveal the code to the first chest... but it doesn't say how. 

Players had to look closely to spot the hidden numbers in each portrait.

Only one chest in the room has a number lock, so there was only one place for that 5 digit code:

John found this funky table at a thrift store for a few dollars. All the chests came from Ross or Home Goods, and then we fitted them with hasps from the hardware store so we could attach locks.

Here comes my next favorite thing in the room: this chest. 

It's full of ash and red feathers, and directions to find a guide to this "Fantastic Beast."

Again, pretty simple.

The book started as a plain craft box, which I customized with a red leather paint finish and some printed out graphics:

Inside is my hot-glue wand, which you might remember from several updates ago:

What I didn't show too closely in that update was the magnetic end to the wand.

If you watched the video you already know what happens, so I can tell you the "ash" in the box is really a pile of iron shavings, which react to the strong magnet built into the wand:

This effect is ridiculously cool and SO FUN to play with. Our first test victim - a non-geek neighbor who was HIGHLY skeptical of reciting a magic spell -  was so startled when the "ash" started to move, it was fabulous. :D

To make the box, John built a false bottom in this chest to raise it up:

Then he added more spacers and a sheet of plexiglass. We bought the iron shavings here on Amazon; a big 12 oz bottle is less than $10.

This next box used to be a cheap paper Pirate chest. We painted it, added a decorative clasp, and then John made this awesome label:

John concocted an entire back story for that label, about how Nymphadora Tonk's family used to be in business with Mundungus Fletcher's family, then they had a falling out, and that's why she doesn't like him in the movies. Ha! John modified a real antique label he found online, so it has that authentic feel to it. (Then I tore it up and grunged the edges.)

Here's the word lock we used, btw, it's less than $9 on Amazon.

Enter the solution to the riddle ("Floo") into the word lock, open it up, and you see this:

This tiny copper lantern is an antique we've had in the laundry room as decoration for years, so imagine our delight when we discovered it not only still works (and is battery operated!), but that John could modify it to work with a black light bulb!

Then I added a flowered metal filigree thing behind the bulb to make it look cool. I doubt anyone noticed that part, but I love it. It looks like a glowing flower when it's turned on!

The bulb came from this $10 black light marker kit. Those are also the markers we used to write all the glowing clues, so you can't beat the price.

The black light text reads "Find these things." And on the bottom: "Let this lantern light the way." (We added the second line  - and the arrow pointing up - when our first test subjects were too timid to  actually pick up the lantern.)

As you find each listed item and shine the lantern at it, more clues:

If you've never played with black light ink before, let me tell ya: this stuff makes you feel like a little kid again. SO FUN.

Now here comes the hard part: players had to realize that some of the runes on the potion bottles around the room matched these new glowing symbols.

They also had to realize there were numbers on the long box in front of them:

Put the correctly labeled potions on the correct numbers, and you get this:

This potion combination unlocks the inner dowel through a series of magnets, but one thing we didn't mention in the video: if you put the wrong bottle on the #3 slot, you can accidentally lock the box instead of opening it. {EVIL LAUGH}

This was an added fail safe to prevent people from just finding bottles with magnets in them and plunking them down on the box, since you can feel the magnets grabbing when you place the bottles. We fooled at least two teams this way - two teams that locked the box on accident and had to ask for help - which fills my heart with glee, mwuahahaa.

In reality only 2 of the 3 magnet slots on the box require magnetic bottles, so you really do have to get that order right!

And yes, I couldn't resist making a rainbow with the bottles. I don't think anyone noticed until they're already solved it, though.

There are two identical handles on sides of the box, and once the proper potions are in place, this one slides out:

Players had to fiddle around a bit to realize this leather flap in the end of the dowel hides the final key.

A moment of appreciation for my pretty matching lock and key, please:

 I sanded off the words, painted both flat black, then glued on some stamped filigree bits.

This chest was another Ross find, but the whole thing was disco-ball silver when we bought it:

I grunged it up with a lot of black, then painted all the straps black, too. And like the other chests, we had to add the hasp for the lock.

Our prizes came together so last minute that I completely forgot to get a photo of the chest filled with them, but here are about three quarters of the ones we made:

The Huffle Bumble Pygmy Puffs!

They started as a joke: a tongue twister I came up with at 3AM while we were working on something else. Then the idea just sprang from there. They were a right pain to make, but I'll show you that whole process - and better photos -  later, in another post.

Inside the chest I stacked these boxes I put together for the Puffs:

 I included instructions: if the winning team wanted a Puff, they should write its name on the box and take it with them, so no one else would see the prizes before solving the room themselves.

I honestly didn't think that many people WOULD want a Puff, but oops, they did. So much so that we ran out, and I have to make more, ha. We do still have our first crappy test Puff, though, so we stuck that one in the chest with our Triwizard Cup when my parents played the room a few days later:

 Ta daaaa.

(Imagine a lot more Puffs in there; that's what our Party Players saw.)

That scroll inside is the Room Reset instructions. Since John and I couldn't monitor the Escape Room during the party, we trusted everyone to follow our list and set everything back the way they found it for the next team - which actually worked!

So that's our first ever Harry Potter Escape Room, peeps. I hope it made you smile!

I also hope this inspires more homemade Escape Rooms out there, because it really was SO MUCH FUN to make. John and I were inspired after playing our first real Escape Room just a few months ago, and from just that one experience we had soooo many ideas, so many things we want to try to build and experiment with. So yeah, I think this will be a new Party Tradition!