A new kind of escape room has landed in North America, and Dallas is the first city to experience it. Over the course of two hours at Sensas, escape room fans will be challenged to solve a mystery using all five of their senses — and have a chance to do some good.
“Every challenge your team completes earns Sensas charms,” said Ellie Zafrin, a spokesperson for the French company, “which are then converted into donations to local charities supporting individuals with disabilities in Dallas.”
The local charity Sensas plans to donate to hasn’t been announced yet, but will be soon.
Sensas was founded in 2015 in Marseille, France, by Silvana Popovic and Grégory Lafon as a means to raise awareness about individuals with disabilities. Over the last decade, the escape room has traveled beyond Europe to the Middle East, Asia and Australia.
The Dallas venue, in the Design District, is much like that of a typical escape room: Participants solve puzzles to achieve an objective. But that’s where the similarities end.
Attendees begin by journeying down a hallway covered with yellow and purple arrows before being led into the first of three rooms, where they experience challenges related to touch, smell, taste, hearing and sight. The twist? Most of it takes place in the dark. Fortunately, a game master is present to direct teams throughout the challenges.
The first two challenges focus on the senses of taste and touch. Without giving too much away, participants try different foods and guess what they’re eating. The touch challenge consists of participants sticking their hands into mystery boxes full of different items and feeling for Braille letters on the boxes’ sides.
Moving to a second room, the players put their sense of smell to the test with two challenges. Teams make guesses on mystery smells and try to crack a combination using a wall full of soaps.
The hearing and sight challenges, the final puzzles to solve, are the highlights. A game of charades, the only challenge that has the lights on, involves part of the team acting out something assigned by the game master, while the other members make guesses.
Then comes a glow-in-the-dark ball pit filled with hidden objects. A final challenge features a laser maze, where attendees can earn extra points — one more chance to contribute to local charities.
Details: Open Monday through Thursday from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m., Friday from 10:30 a.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday and Sunday from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. at Sensas Dallas, 921 N. Riverfront Blvd., Dallas. Tickets are $44. For ages 7 and up. Teams can range from four to 15 people.
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