A new escape room style activity may be coming to select resorts at Walt Disney World in the near future. According to a reliable source who reached out to us, Disney is looking to create small-scale experiences at a few resorts that can entertain guests with puzzles matching the overall themes found at the resort.
It’s believed that these experiences are currently being designed for three resorts – Disney’s Polynesian Village Resort, Disney’s Saratoga Springs Resort and Disney’s All-Star Sports Resort. Each resort’s “escape room” would be themed to the resort instead of being themed towards any specific Disney characters. Though the activities are similar to escape rooms in nature (complete a set of tasks in order to move on), it’s not believed they’ll be called or referred to as escape rooms by Disney.
The size of these experiences sounds relatively small. Think a large room, perhaps similar to a large conference room, that could be separated into several smaller rooms that combine to create the overall activity. You may complete a challenge in the first room before moving on to the second room. You’d have to complete all the tasks to “escape” or complete the experience.
Overall hourly capacity sounds like it’d be fairly low. We’d wager a guess that 50 guests per hour would even be on the high end. But, that’s a more impressive number when you combine the three locations and assume that additional locations could be added if the initial tests go well. This sounds like Disney wants to test the water with this concept.
The overall idea of escape rooms isn’t new in this industry. The concept grew in popularity over the last several years and may have even plateaued in the last couple. Some cruise ships even offer similar experiences to guests sailing with them, but some have called that a fad that will eventually fade. Disney may be a little late to the game here, but if they have developed innovative puzzles with fun themes at a fair price, they could find a way to keep guests entertained and at their resort for longer periods of time.
Details as far as pricing, length and complexity of the puzzles are unknown at this time.
As always, take these kinds of rumors with a grain of salt until Disney officially announces their plans. Disney routinely develops and tests new ideas, but a large number of those may never be fully developed.
