Marvin's Gold Rush Escape - Colorado School of Mines TPED

Travel back to 1865 and join Marvin the Miner in a RUSH to find the lost gold of Thomas L Golden. The no good folks of Denver are on their way to claim it for themselves and take over the town, and it is up to you to work together, find the gold, and escape before it’s too late!

Introduction:

This year, Jalen Thomas established the Theme Park Engineering and Design Group at the Colorado School of Mines. The goal was to introduce the STEM focused school into the world of themed entertainment, providing a place where everyone is welcome to learn about the career opportunities and work on exciting projects. This spring, the group set out to accomplish a goal of creating a portable escape room in 3 months with a limited budget. The mission was to create an engaging experience that revolved around a story surrounding the school’s alternate mascot and the mining history of Golden, Colorado. With a small group of 8 students, it was very much a challenge as well as an exciting opportunity.

The Storyline:

The preshow video introduces the guests into the story for their upcoming experience. The guests travel back to 1865 where Marvin the Miner explains to the guests about the history of Golden, including the town’s origins surrounding Thomas L Golden, a miner that found gold in Clear Creek in 1858. Ever since then, the town flourished with settlers and pioneers from all over trying to strike it rich. The story takes a turn when Marvin reveals that Thomas Golden fled Colorado in 1860, his reason for disappearance never was truly known in history textbooks. The guests are informed that there has been rumor that Thomas left behind a sum of gold for someone that deserved it, and nobody has been able to find where it is. All that remains is Golden’s old office. Marvin needs the guest’s help as he is informed that the no-good folks of Denver believe they know the location of the gold and are on their way to Golden right now. The guests must enter Tom’s office and try and find the gold in under 30 minutes when the Denver settlers arrive. Marvin has instructed the guests that he will keep guard and give warnings when they get closer.

Designing and Building:

With such a small group of individuals, everybody was involved in different aspects of the project. The top focuses were Storytelling, Puzzles, and Operations. One of the biggest challenges was developing a “set” that could be transported into a classroom and built quickly, as well as be structurally supportive of guests bumping into the walls. The design also had to focus on an easy-to-follow story that would engage the guests in their 30-minute experience. Each of the puzzles was designed to support the old western theme, with many practical puzzles involving lock boxes. The room itself was designed to resemble this old time office, with maps, old mining lanterns, a fireplace, and a bookshelf.

The puzzles are among the most important aspect of an escape room, so the team had to focus on creating simple and engaging puzzles, as well as developing an electrical and mechanical puzzle involving electronics. With a time limit of 30 minutes, the puzzles had to flow quickly as well as be able to have a room reset time under 4 minutes to allow for high guest capacity. The end product featured 7 puzzles, featuring a combination of sequential and parallel puzzles that split groups up with 2 puzzles being solved at the same time and then rejoined for the final puzzle. The puzzles combined different aspects in problem solving to engage different guest strengths. The result was a combination of elements of discovery, word and number manipulation, and pattern recognition.

The final technical puzzle played a very important role in the escape room. The team knew they wanted the final puzzle to feature an iconic TNT plunger that when pressed down would reveal the gold. To integrate this trigger sensor with the final puzzle, the technical team created the Matrix puzzle, where the calendar dates found throughout the previous puzzles formed into a code in a 4×4 matrix, with a keypad on a revamped nightstand. The TNT plunger uses a switch to detect when the escapees have used it, and when they do, it sends a signal to the matrix. The matrix has an LED keypad for the escapees to enter their patter, which lights up the matrix on the table. If the pattern is correct and they use the plunger, they get the gold from a trapdoor controlled by a solenoid. If it is incorrect, it makes a sound to tell them to reset the plunger and try again.

Goals and Results:

The main goal of this project was to bring something that hasn’t been done before at this campus and to create something fun and exciting that highlights what themed entertainment is all about. As we are the first theme park designated group in Colorado, it was an exciting experience to bring a taste of this industry here. With a budget of $2000 and restrictions on purchasing through Amazon and Home Depot, it was a challenging experience to create an immersive experience that could be set up and taken down in a couple hours.

The project was a big success with the debut at the Spring Expo. The real reward for the team was seeing the guests have fun together, with those young and old enjoying different aspects of the room. We were also invited to the Littleton High School after prom, with the queue achieving a wait time of over 4 hours. The team learned a lot from this project and will take that newfound knowledge to propel next year’s iteration to new heights.