Room escapes X-mas image

By PHYLLIS ZORN

Staff writer

Audrea and David Frost worked against a ticking clock Saturday to try to save baby Jesus from being disintegrated by a villain named Icicle.

The couple solved puzzle after puzzle, read clues that led them to the next riddle to solve, found keys and unlocked boxes that held more clues, and tried their hardest to save the baby before Icicle got his way and took Jesus away forever.

Unfortunately for the Frosts, time ran out before they managed to save the baby, and when the clock struck 30 minutes, Jesus simply was gone.

The escape room where the Frosts searched for the baby was an outreach activity of Hillsboro’s Mennonite Brethren Church. It was open from 8:45 a.m. to 1:45 p.m. in the Studio 23 building, 107 S. Main St.

Miriam Kliewer, the Hillsboro woman who designed an escape room for Hillsboro’s Down Home Christmas celebration, and her family have created escape rooms before, but for their own enjoyment. This year’s escape room, with a nativity theme, is open to the public and conveniently located downtown.

“The theme is going to be baby Jesus taken away from Christmas because he’s been taken out of Christmas,” Kliewer said. “The premise is that the world has taken baby Jesus out.”

Visitors first found a note from a never-seen villain, Icicle.

No one stood at the door passing out notes. The sneaky Icicle had left them in an empty manger and gone off to set his evil plan in motion.

The note said that if visitors didn’t rescue the baby Jesus in 30 minutes, baby Jesus would go “poof.”

Inside the escape room, a tree with ornaments and Christmas stickers had some clues, but not all the stickers were clues.

“You really don’t know what’s going to be a clue,” Kliewer said.

Would-be rescuers encountered a letter to Santa and a transparency to be laid on the letter. When the transparency was put over the letter, a clue appeared.

“All the puzzles lead you to a box of colored vials of liquid,” Kliewer said. “The vials lead you to a lock that unlocks the box that has the disintegrator.”

Baby Jesus is on the other side of a door with the disintegrator, waiting to be rescued.

Kliewer is director of communications for Hillsboro’s Mennonite Brethren Church. The church was looking for a way to reach out to the community and thought a family get-together activity would be a great way to do that, she said.