Celebrating a Year of Poe!

It’s been one year since we’ve launched our Edgar Allan Poe room, and what a year it’s been! Despite the ups and downs of 2021, our newest and favorite escape room has been a success. After years of planning and construction, it’s great to see that y’all have loved the best escape room in Arlington as much as we’ve anticipated. 

Poe’s Chamber, as it looked on its opening day in January 2021!

So why Edgar Allan Poe? The man’s works have had a profound effect on modern American culture - not just literature, but everything from movies to internet creepy stories that touches the macabre tends to draw at least some inspiration from his tormented works. Poe’s journeys from Richmond to Baltimore, and the tragedies he befell along the way, have made him intertwined with the Chesapeake area, beloved or not, and his presence is unmistakable. From the near-invention of the murder-mystery with Murder at the Rue Morgue to his Davinci Code style ciphers in Gold-Bug, Poe pioneered many things that inspire not only escape rooms, but 21st century pastimes at large.

Our Poe themed room has a history from even before we first opened our doors in 2018. Our sister location, Escape Room RVA in Richmond, Virginia, had an Edgar Allan Poe themed room in 2016. I believe it was also called Poe’s Chamber back then, but it was a very different experience - it took place all in one room, with a goal to open Poe’s chest (which is currently in Secret in the Attic!). We drew on what we liked about that room, keeping only two puzzles, and discarded the rest to make an even more immersive experience. Better lighting, better props, cleaner puzzles, and top-of-the-line quality high end construction made for a design we were thrilled to share with the world.

Before we even had all four of our escape rooms set up, Poe’s Chamber was in the works as the next room to build once Glitch retired in January of 2020. It all started as a journal of puzzle ideas and shared documents with props, flow charts, wiring diagrams, and parts lists. As with all great projects, planning involved a lot of collaboration and changes.

Our Edgar Allan Poe themed escape room at Escape Room RVA in Richmond, circa 2015 or 2016.

Plans for Poe were complete before Christmas of 2019, and with the holiday season ending we set plans to retire Glitch in January of 2020 and open Poe in April. When news of a global pandemic started in late February and closures began in early March, we put our plans on hold with the rest of the world. With our doors closed, we did what construction we could, and Poe retained steady progress as the world ground to a halt.

With the finishing touches being put on Poe’s Chamber in December of 2020, we began beta testing. Satisfied with the tweaks that we had made, we were ready for launch! The reception to Poe’s Chamber was as warm as we’d hoped, and a year later it’s still highly frequented and well-loved. For the Poe enthusiasts out there, we strongly believe this is the best Poe themed escape room in the DC area, and we’re proud to have it be a part of the best escape room in Arlington. If you’re looking for your next birthday party idea or team building activity, look no further!

Some behind-the-scenes Poe Construction! At this stage, we were running wires for all the props and framing the walls. If you’ve played this room, you might notice some details even in this early stage. If you played Glitch, the brown wires in the back powered the props and puzzles near the television monitors. Pardon the sawdust!