Find Your Team Spirit by Escaping the Room

Escape Games aren’t just a great form of entertainment–they are chock full of brain teasers, puzzles and challenges that require you to work together to complete one simple mission: Escape the room within one hour. Getting there isn’t always so simple.

While certainly a fun way to spend an hour with friends, The Escape Game, in conjunction with The John Maxwell Team, offers a special program called The Team Development Package. Geared specifically towards co-workers, this package provides an opportunity to strategically work together and view team dynamics in a new light by helping you understand and maximize each individual’s strengths. The program includes an analytical survey that gives the team leader key insights into the strengths, limitations and specific personality traits of each employee through The Maxwell DISC Method. This team-building exercise can help you bring new knowledge about effective communication, peer understanding and personal growth opportunities back into the work place.

On  December 17, our team was invited to experience Playground, one of four escape rooms in the newly-opened The Escape Game located in King of Prussia Mall. This immersive experience brought a fictional story to life, as we found ourselves locked in a colorful classroom, playing the role of 4th grade students. The room playfully included small details that were unique to King of Prussia, including the school name: Candlebrook Elementary School. After a video set the scene and described our mission – to receive A+ grades in ten subjects in order to get out of class – we set to work clambering around the room trying to find clues, hints or puzzles to solve. While disorienting at first, the whole team quickly fell into the roles that came most naturally. Working as a group, we slowly started raising our grade average. The interactive experience was full of excitement with doors popping open, passages revealing themselves and new clues around every turn. With a few arguments here and there and way more hints than we were supposed to get, our team excelled in all ten subjects and escaped the classroom!

Fresh off of our thrilling escape, the next day we each completed our individual DISC Assessments and used our Communication Impact Reports as a launching point to discuss our communication styles, strengths and areas of motivation and personal growth.  The reports were spot on and quite insightful.  Overall, the entire experience taught us valuable lessons about ourselves and each other. While we began the exercise in the classroom in our own ways, throughout the experience we had to learn to be more cohesive and communicate better in order to escape Mrs. Clayton’s 4th grade class. In the end, we can proudly say, that WE ESCAPED–with a better team spirit and more introspective knowledge than we had before we walked into the room.

The Escape Game is located at 160 N. Gulph Road (between Yard House and Outback Steakhouse) in the King of Prussia Mall. You can check out their website and book your own event here.