Watch: Coronation Street calls on Edinburgh Escape room to help celebrate Diamond anniversary

Escape, Scotland’s leading escape room company, helped Corrie celebrate the milestone with an online event that saw some of the soap’s favourites attempting to free actor and comedian Jason Manford from a locked Rovers Return. Escape designed an interactive experience to allow Mikey North, who plays Gary Windass, Julia Goulding, best known as Shona Platt, Ryan Russell who is Michael Bailey and Mollie Gallagher aka Nina Lucas, to work together to free Jason Manford from the famous pub in just 60 minutes - one minute for each year of the shows existence - as fans watched online and offered advice live via Twitter.

In Race to The Rovers, each cast member had to successfully complete a series of mental and physical games as nearly 300,000 people watched the challenge unfold, with more continuing to catch with the challenge on Twitter. The innovative adventure comes at the end of a difficult year for the escape room industry.

Daniel Hill, founder of Escape, says, “Coronation Street is a British institution and we’re delighted to have played our part in its birthday celebrations. We had great fun designing the concept of Race to the Rovers, which brought together the cast, the crew, and hundreds of thousands of fans for the unique digital experience.”

Explaining how Race To The Rovers came about, Hill, who turned 40 earlier this year, says, "Claire Hoang from ITV found us through our website when looking for an escape room production team and I was incredibly keen to help out. The original structure of the event wasn’t supposed to take place on the street, however, Covid restrictions to protect the cast meant that it had to be restructured."

The high profile event has come towards the end of what has been a very difficult year for Escape, reveals Hill who grew up in East Craigs and was educated at Clermiston Primary and the Royal High. "The coronavirus lockdown was devastating for our industry, but we’re delighted that our venues are back open in many locations, and we’re working hard at Escape to diversify our business as well. The popularity of the escape concept continues to grow, so we’ll keep on finding new ways for people to enjoy it.”

Escape first opened its doors on St Colme Street in 2014 after Hill "escaped" university where he studying to be a Maths teacher when, what he initially thought would be a "part time income for evenings and weekends", "exploded”.

"I never finished the course, but it has been amazing to see Escape grow,” he says.

Now with more than 200 rooms across the world, the popularity of the escape room phenomenon shows no sign of waning.

“The main attraction for me is social interaction. It's like being the main character in your own adventure film. Or taking part in an immersive theatre event where the audience is just you and your friends. Part game, pure escapism, it's something everybody should try at least once in their lives.”

He adds, "It's amazing to watch a team play together and not touch their phones. I think it is incredibly rare to see people so engaged that the phone becomes an afterthought. It shows that there is a real desire for tactile immersive experiences.”

That desire has been around for some time now, those old enough will remember Channel Four's cult TV show The Crystal Maze, which first introduced many to the concept back in the 90s. There's a little similarity between that series and today's escape room experience reflects Hill.

"The Crytsal Maze definitely helped inspire escape rooms. One difference is there is a common goal in an escape room, such as find the holy grail or rob a bank. You will find a similar set of challenges, some physical, some mental and some a little off the wall. What really separates the experiences is that everyone is engaged throughout in an escape room. It isn’t a series of individual challenges, it requires the skills of all the team.”

Like every aspect of life in 2020, pandemic restrictions have forced Escape to evolve what they do to remain safe.

“We’ve had to do a number of things differently. We’ve reduced our capacity, we have increased cleaning in the games, we’ve put air purifiers in place between games and our team have been fantastic at following the guidelines as they have evolved," he reveals.

"The real challenge has been switching between opening and closing multiple times. As we sell tickets in advance it makes it incredibly difficult as you are starting from zero every time you reopen.”Those who do book could find themselves in a themed game - Escape's first was The Da Vinci Room in 2014.

“We like to engage with popular culture. If you like Harry Potter you would like Witchcraft and Wizardry for example. Themes range from the more traditional Sherlock Holmes games to some that are a bit more out there such as the Carnival of Curiosities or Eight Years Later, based around a Zombie apocalypse. We have a great mix of games.”With Coronation Street under the belt, might we expect to see Escape team up with any other TV shows or personalities in the near future?

“We certainly hope so​," says Hill​. ​"There's n​othing in the pipeline for now but we would love to work on a TV show. With the events of the last few months​,​ who knows what is possible.”

Watch Race To The Rovers on Twitter here

Details of Escape Edinburgh can be found here

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