“Oh, No! You’re Scheduled for the Wrong Surgery!”
Don’t worry. It’s just a game–an escape from reality, actually. Welcome to Doc Savage’s Exam Room, one of two cleverly designed, fun-filled rooms at Eye Spy Escape Room, 1401 S. Danville Drive. Eye Spy, a creation of business partners Krista Hale and Alex Nicolato, opened in April 2023 and soon will expand to three rooms, plus a mobile unit that can be taken just about anywhere, including schools and birthday parties.
“It will go where we’re called,” Nicolato said.
Doc Savage’s Exam Room and Frothy Top Brewery are the two rooms now available at Eye Spy, with Totally Recalled in the works. The object of the Doc Savage room is to escape before the surgery–the wrong surgery–gets underway. Frothy Top Brewery uses a secret family recipe that has been handed down from one generation to the next. But now it can’t be found, and it’s the job of the puzzle solvers to find it before the boil clock runs out and the beer is ruined.
The idea for Eye Spy came from Hale, who grew up in a competitive family that loved board games. She and her two sons always seek out escape rooms when they travel. She drew Nicolato into the escape room craze in the fall of 2022 and they opened Eye Spy the following April. Escape rooms became popular in North America, East Asia, and Europe in the 2010s. They were immediately popular with Hale.
“The first time I ever discovered an escape room,” she said, “I was hooked.”
The goal is to “escape” the room in one hour by solving puzzles. Each room has 18 to 25 puzzles, which Hale and Nicolato wrote themselves. Clues are scattered around the room, with the goal of solving the final puzzle that unlocks a hidden button that is pushed to stop the clock. The puzzles are designed so that it is impossible to go immediately to the end.
The rooms at Eye Spy are not locked, Hale said, and all the rooms are kid friendly. A minimum of two players are allowed to play at one time. Doc Savage’s Exam Room can hold up to eight players and Frothy Top Brewery can accommodate six. Larger groups can divide and play both rooms at the same time. Admission is by appointment only.
Hale’s “day job” is director of sales in the hotel industry. Nicolato retired from the Air Force in May 2023. He spent his entire career at Dyess AFB, beginning in January 2004. He was a maintainer on C-130 cargo planes and has considerable woodworking skills that are evident in the imaginative rooms.
“I get to see the puzzles come to life,” Nicolato said.
Just like Hale and Nicolato look for escape rooms when they travel, visitors to Abilene also seek them out. In fact, 75 to 80 percent of Eye Spy visitors are from out of town, Hale said. That is changing as more Abilenians of all ages are discovering the fun of figuring out how to solve the puzzles, sort of like a physical board game. That’s part of the beauty of the escape rooms for Hale, who still remembers how much fun it was to compete with family members over a good board game. “You’ve got to put your phone down and use your brain,” she said.
Kim Thompson gets that. Her first trip to Eye Spy was May 20, 2023, and she has been back three times, including once with a group. The reason for returning?
“When we went back, we saw what we may have overlooked the first time,” she said, “and it was so fun solving the puzzles.”
Escape rooms are popular with students of all levels, church and civic groups, and businesses that use them as team-building exercises. Some escape room centers buy prepared kits, but not Eye Spy. Hale and Nicolato come up with the ideas themselves, write the puzzles, and build the rooms.
They are frequent visitors to consignment and antique stores in search of props for a new room. They are hopeful that one day their Eye Spy Escape Room will be franchised, and people will buy their prepared kits. Eye Spy also has partnered with the military’s SkillBridge program for service members who are within 180 days of completing their service.
The program gives the service member an opportunity to learn a specific civilian trade. Nicolato sees an opportunity for people leaving Dyess to learn how to write the puzzles, build the rooms, market the concept, and even open a franchise of Eye Spy.
Even though Hale and Nicolato came up with the ideas for the rooms at Eye Spy, wrote the puzzles, and built the rooms, the experience of seeing new groups trying to solve the riddles never gets old. Each group is different, Hale said, and each has a different reaction.
“That’s what keeps it fun,” she said.
By Loretta Fulton
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