Popular entertainment venue Escape Stirling has opened two new escape rooms in the city’s historic Arcade.
The franchise, run by Graeme Riddell and John Murphy, already hosts three escape rooms at its Murray Place location which opened four years ago.
The businessmen also run a third entertainment centre Game of Throwing – which gives customers the chance to throw axes at a target – in a separate unit in the Arcade.
Now, escape room fans can try out two new rooms – ‘Escape The Seven Seas: McRaven’s Revenge’ and `The Wizard’s Apprentice’ – in Stirling Arcade with a third room set to open in the new year.
John says: “Our expansion has been led by demand – we have a lot of customers who have completed all three rooms at Murray Place and have been asking us to add more.
We’ve no space to expand at Murray Place but we had the opportunity to take on a unit in the Arcade so we decided to go for that. Having the two escape room venues plus Game of Throwing really increases our capacity in terms of the number of people we can accommodate.
We get a lot of large groups coming in for team building exercises or a staff night out and it means we now have five – soon to be six – escape rooms to offer them.
The axe throwing venue can also take up to 50 people which means we can spread large groups across all three venues and they have the chance to try an escape room and also take part in axe throwing on the same day. This package is proving extremely popular for team building events.”
The second Stirling Escape venue is based at Unit 5 of the Arcade (close to Murray Place) with work on its third escape room – The Bunker – currently underway.
The two new rooms are already a hit with customers and are booked out most weekends.
One has a pirate theme – ‘McRaven’s Revenge’ – which sees teams locked in the brig of a ship trying to solve clues left by the Captain which will allow them to escape and find the hidden treasure.
The other room – ‘Wizard’s Apprentice’ – features the story of the Great Wizard who has been fighting to stop a war happening. He has been captured and needs the team to navigate his eccentric home and find the crystal which can rescue him and save the world.
The third room at the Arcade – ‘The Bunker’ – will feature an apocalyptic scenario where people are trapped in an underground bunker following a catastrophe and must now escape and return to normality.
John says: “We specifically picked the Arcade as the new location so that each of the three venues is just a short walk from the others and large groups can get from one to another via a one-minute walk. It’s also great to have city centre locations which are so near to the train and bus stations.
We’re hoping our new venue will help increase footfall in the Arcade which is important for all the businesses in there. It’s a great business community with lots of different companies to bring people in and we can all support and benefit from each other.”
Full details of the Escape Stirling rooms along with opening times and how to book are available on the website – www.escape.game/escape-stirling
Escape Stirling is based at 80 Murray Place and Unit 5 at Stirling Arcade while Game of Throwing can be found at Unit 25 in the Arcade.
Escape Stirling also has a Facebook page – www.facebook.com/escapestirling/ –
and is on Instagram – www.instagram.com/escapestirling/
At Game of Throwing, participants are given axes and taught how to throw them at wooden targets, painted with concentric circles and dots, which are at the end of specially built lanes.
More details about the venue and a booking system can be found on the website – www.gameofthrowing.co.uk/game-of-throwing-stirling
