The Divas meet up with Kyle Cacilhas who runs an escape room club at the University of Windsor, Ontario called Escape Artists. Kyle has taken his love for escape rooms and turned it into a club to raise funds for other organizations!
96 - Acting in Escape Rooms
The Divas interview Barbara-Audrey Bergeron, who has acted in escape rooms and was also an actor in their events!
95 - Seattle and Vancouver: Escape Room Marathon
Manda and Errol head off to the west coast with Margaux and Leezet to do an escape room Marathon! They hit 16 escape rooms in about 3 and a half days. It was amazing! They also got a chance to talk to so many people! And Errol rants only two times out of 16 escapes!
To read about our adventures, Manpans has a three part blog series on our adventures!
Episode Outline
01:47 - Brian Hughes - Pandora's Locks and the Vancouver Escape Room Market
10:20 - Margaux & Elvina - Discuss Find & Seek and awful logic puzzles
15:22 - We're in Seattle!
18:48 - Seth Wolfson of Hourglass Escapes
20:11 - Emile Wang and Justin Nevins after Epic Team Adventures
30:12 - Kristine Atri of Escape Artist
34:27 - Margaux, Leezet, Manpans, and Errol discuss their final thoughts
61:05 - Shoutouts to GMs and friends
Russel of Find and Seek
The wonderful GMs at Hourglass Escapes (And thanks to Seth)
Amber and Jessica of Epic Team Adventures (And thanks to Jennifer Geske as well!)
Kristine of Escape Artist
Michael, Kenneth, Nate, Tad of Locurio (And thanks to Summer)
Harrison of Quest Factor
Giselle and Michelle of Pandora's Locks (And thanks to Brian)
And a special thanks to our friends who joined us in our escapes: Margaux, Leezet, Elvina, Justin Nevins, Emile Wang, Michelle, John, Dina, and Evan. It was great to have a crew to eat with, play games with, and talk for hours.
94 - Interview with Escape Rumors
Errol and Manda meet up and do escape rooms with Randy Hum and Sarah Moliner-Roy of the escape room blog EscapeRumors.com!
Errol mentions someone forgot to press record in the first part. If it isn’t clear, it was him who wasted everyone’s time.
Also, he talks a lot this episode. Good grief.
Our after room shot at escapegames.ca!
93 - Live at the Escape Summit
This is our third live podcast and we deliver it at the Escape Summit, an escape room conference in Canada!
We talk about a number of things, but the first question we tackle is “When is an escape room good enough?”
92 - Divas Take NOLA
Mike, Ruby, and Manpans leave Errol behind to explore the escape rooms of Louisiana! They also do a quick jaunt into Houston, Texas!
In this two hour special, listen in as they talk to:
32:09 Megan Mouton of Clue Carré
34:23 Andrew Preble of Escape My Room
41:32 Dwayne Sanburn of 13th Gate
47:15 Noah Sylvester, an enthusiast who drove in from Florida just for 13th Gate.
51:09 Errol being prank called on the phone
56:11 Eugene Byon, a friend and newbie to escape rooms
1:29:15 Haley Cooper and Cameron of Strange Bird Immersive
And then, hear their closing thoughts:
1:36:04 - Manda Thoughts
1:48:27 - Mike and Ruby Thoughts
1:55:55 - Ruby's thoughts on food
91 - The Escape Summit with Fred Preddy
Errol is alone while the other Divas are in NOLA, so he talks to Fred Preddy of Escape Maze about the upcoming Canadian Escape Conference, The Escape Summit.
90 - Frequently Argued Questions about Escape Rooms
Dan Egnor has organized a crowdsourced document of Frequently Argued Questions about Escape Rooms, which you can find on theCodex.ca.
However, the Divas don’t cover these questions, considering the doc does a good job of that. Instead, they chat about the topics listed at the bottom of the document:
Refunds for tech issues
Should photos of the room be shown or not?
“first timer reviews” vs. enthusiast reviews — are reviews useful at all?
Franchises
Traditional locks vs. “no lock” rooms
89 - Online Escape Rooms with YouEscape
The Divas interview Nick Vanikiotis, the creator of YouEscape! YouEscape is an online, live escape game where you speak to the game master through your microphone (or smartphone) in order to interact with the objects in the live video stream.
It’s pretty cool and Manda and Errol talk about their experience as well without giving any spoilers!
88 - Dustin Freeman on Remote Immersive Design
Manpans and Errol get together with Dustin Freeman, creator of Aluminum Cat, an online adventure, immersive experience, with a live actor.
In this episode, Dustin gets a chance to talk about creating this project, as well as the Immersive Design Community.
The Divas also have a Let’s Play version if you wish to see the game in action before listening to the podcast!
87 - Weird Escape Attempts - Fault of Designer or Player?
Buzzfeed released an article where Gamemasters describe weird escape attempts. The Divas decided to go through each one and discuss whether or not the attempt is because the game designer did something wrong, or if the player really is just clueless.
We also get around to how may times we get scared in escape rooms!
86 - Escape Room Themes
The Divas got a request from Jonathan Driscoll of Escaparium to talk about themes. So we did! Huzzah! :D
For a list of themes, we used the ones from the 2018 Escape Room Enthusiast survey.
85 - Crimes Against Mimesis in Escape Rooms
This topic came up a few times in the enthusiast groups, and so we decided to tackle the sins committed against mimesis in escape rooms, as discussed in Roger Giner-Sorolla’s essay “Crimes Against Mimesis” which can be found in the IF Theory Reader.
We also talk about the “Bill of Player’s Rights” which is discussed in Graham Nelson’s essay The Craft of Adventure.
84 - How to Start a Podcast or Blog in the Escape Room Industry
There are a lot of people looking to start a podcast, blog, or youtube video series, and so the Divas have dedicated a whole podcast to talk about how to start one! They talk about the 4 C’s of creating content for public consumption, and they also answer the frequently asked question: Why do they call her Manpans?
And for those of you who are interested, here are the two links about podcasting discussed in this episode.
83 - Dealing with Criticism in the Escape Room Industry
There was a small bit of drama, and Errol loves drama, and that spurred on this podcast!
82 - Escape Room Safety
The news of the tragedy hit the escape room industry pretty hard. The Divas discuss escape room safety in their latest episode.
And since we recorded this last night, we are releasing this with no edits! Well, ok, there were 4 edits, but only 4!
81 - Top Escape Rooms Project with Rich Bragg
If you haven’t heard about the Top Escape Rooms Project, you should check it out. Seventy enthusiasts around the world got together and voted on the top 25 escape rooms!
In this episode, we caught up with Rich Bragg (also the co-founder of ClueKeeper), to discuss how he started the Top Escape Rooms Project. Instead of talking about the winning rooms, we talk more about the details on the genesis of the Enthusiast Choice Awards, or the “Braggs” as we like to call them.
80 - The Escape Room Scene with Room Escape Artist
It is now tradition to catch up with Lisa and David Spira of Room Escape Artist. We talk about a lot of things, and for a full time signature breakdown, check out REA’s post!
This is the photo talked about in the podcast. Photo courtesy of EscapeRoomZandvoort.nl.
79 - The Game is Now with Nick Moran
For Escape Room and BBC’s Sherlock fans comes a new game called The Game Is Now. Manda and Errol get a chance to talk to the game director, Nick Moran, best known for creating one of the top escape room companies in the world, Time Run.
78 - Guinness World Record For Most Escape Rooms in One Day
On October 2nd, 2018, Richard Bragg, Daniel Egnor, Amanda Harris, and Ana Ulin set the Guinness World Record for most escape rooms attended in one day! Listen in as they tell us logistics and anecdotes of accomplishing this amazing feat!
