How one mom threw a DIY escape room party her kids will never forget

The party was for my daughter’s 12th birthday party. There were seven 12-year-old girls total, including my daughter.

Because it was a larger group, we divided the girls into two smaller groups (of 3 and 4) and then timed it to see who finished the fastest!

This meant we printed the game kit out twice.

Editors note: if you're after the escape game kit that Beth used you can download it here.

It was great seeing the happiness and excitement on everyone’s faces! You could see they left the party with their adrenaline still going.

We kept all our preparations a secret from my daughter, so other than knowing she was doing an escape room called The Lost Mummy, she knew nothing. When she walked into that room, she was just as surprised as everyone else. She turned to me and said:

• I printed these off and cut them out and glued the pages together as the instructions suggest.
• Then I laminated them and left a deep margin on the spine for binding them. Your local office supply store can both laminate and use their binding machine to punch the binding holes into the side.
• Inside of a normal spiral binding, I laced some twine through the holes.

• My husband made this out of wood, and then I used decoupage to attach the paper.
• The tablet was actually two 3/8" pieces of wood glued together. He first cut the slots for the symbols out of one piece and then glued that to a solid piece without holes.
• Then we glued on the printed page and cut the outside with a scroll saw to make it look more like a stone. The pieces with symbols were made with thicker wood so they were raised a bit from the surface.

• The first thing we did on this was turn it into a clue on how to read the snake path. So it now says, “From the serpents tail you’ll start, for he holds the key which reveals the heart.”
• My husband cut it out in wood, again using a scroll saw, and I decoupaged the paper onto it.

• The process was similar to the rosetta stone. The tricky part here was getting all the pieces to fit together enough that the puzzle pieces could fit into any of the 4 locations in any direction.

• We made these 3D using foam board, which can be found near the posterboard at any store that sells school supplies. I glued the heart pieces to the board and then used an x-acto knife to cut it out. Then decoupaged over the top.

• My husband made the shapes out of wood, and then I decoupaged the papers onto them.
• The obelisks were made from 2"x2" wood, cut and sanded to shape using the pattern provided in the kit. The pyramid was made from the provided pattern too, though it took some extra fiddling to get the angles right (because wood has thickness, while paper does not).
• We made extra obelisks as a distraction. The extra ones we edited so that they didn’t have a god on them. We also edited the correct ones to match the directional combination lock that we wanted to use (up, left, right, down).

• We installed a new doorknob to the room, with a key so we could lock them in. The final challenge was to access the key so they could use it to get out.
• Some of our padlocks required that we attach a latch to the door/box/cupboard. We didn’t want to drill holes and make things permanent, so we used Command Hook refill strips to attach the latches.

• Interesting jars
• Bowls for decoration

• Plastic bugs and snakes
• Fake jewels and coins for the treasure chest
• Canopic jars

• Flameless Candles
• Palm Trees
• Egyptian Tapestry
• Dungeon Wall Covering
• Directional Lock

If Bethany’s story inspires you, maybe it’s time to start planning your own epic escape party! She used The Lost Mummy game kit.

Either way, you’re encouraging folks to set aside their mobile devices and live in the moment for a while. A truly worthwhile quest, if ever there was one 🙂