Activities for Teens: Escape Room Lockdown Ottawa

Like most high school students, I have a firm separation between fun and tests of intelligence. A math quiz is not exactly my idea of a relaxing Friday evening, and it doesn’t take much thinking to go to the movies. Work and play don’t mix for me… with one exception. I find escape rooms to be a thrilling test of the mind that I can enjoy with friends. That's why I chose Lockdown Ottawa’s Trudeau Towers for my most recent outing.

As soon as we entered the building, we were excited to check out the escape room. My friends and I climbed down the metallic stairs in the windowless structure and checked in. We were then taken to another floor and shown a video about the story behind our escape room. The plot for us was that we were visiting Trudeau Towers, Ottawa’s newest luxury hotel. The guide then showed us into what appeared to be an elevator and closed the door.

Suddenly, the lights went out as we were left confused for around 10 seconds. When they turned on, an announcer over the speakers revealed that our elevator was stuck and we had 45 minutes to diffuse a bomb before it went off. Just like that, our puzzle-solving began.

Obviously, I cannot reveal how to solve the escape room or give too many details. The clues consisted of riddles and various creative contraptions. Each clue lead to the combination key of a lock that would open up another clue. We had to work together as a team to figure out how to solve the escape room.

As the game progressed, we used the walkie-talkie for one of our limited hints and eventually opened a trap door connected to a crawl space. As the clock wound down and the bomb came closer to detonating, we organized ourselves into different roles to solve the clues more efficiently. Just as we were close to solving the second last clue, the door opened and our guide revealed that the bomb had gone off. 

While we weren’t able to escape before the clock ran out, we had a great time solving clues and working together. We were impressed by the creative ways we were supposed to find lock combinations and how engaging the design of our escape room ones. My friends and I will be sure to check out another one of Lockdown Ottawa’s escape rooms sometime in the future. 

Lockdown Ottawa offers 5 different escape rooms, each with different themes. For a Halloween themed escape, check out their CarnEvil room. The other available themes are hockey, time travel and aliens. Unlike many other escape rooms, the cost for these rooms are a flat rate of $109+HST regardless of number of players (which ranges from 2-6.) For more information, click here.

David is a fifteen-year-old aspiring adventure and travel writer living in Ottawa.  Skydiving is on his bucket list. He received a complimentary ticket for this post, but all views are his own.