Alice in Wonderland Puzzles Room

Every year Poland celebrates the “Libraries Week,” consisting on different events and activities during the week for everyone. During my stay in the country it happened from the 8th till the 15th of May and, of course, the library in Pomiechówek wouldn’t be less and plenty of workshops and other events were held here.

I also decided to do my part and create a new escape room -once again following the idea of the previous volunteer, Angeline.

After much discussion, we decided that the story theme would be “Alice in Wonderland,” merging the fairyland kingdom with the writer Lewis Carroll’s room. The final composition turned out pretty cool in my opinion.

The pre-game story explained that the Queen of Hearts had stolen some pages of Carroll’s manuscript, so that Wonderland would never be the same and she could take over it. The participants had 40 minutes to find the 10 missing pages in the room and save the Kingdom.

First, the children (though not only did we have children, also adults!) had to play memory cards with illustrations from the first Alice edition, which gave them the password to enter Wonderland through the Rabbit Hole –this is  literal, they had to kneel and squeeze through a “hole” down a tree on the wall! Kalina, or the “Mean Guardian” was standing at the door preventing them from coming inside ahead of time.

Once on the other side of the hole, Marine -The Rabbit- and I -Alice- were waiting there in case the participants needed some hint to find the manuscripts.

The right side was set as Carroll's writing room, with the desk full of old papers and ink, a lamp, a sofa and a coffee table and many other old things on the shelves. They had to pay special attention to the clock, tea, chess and suitcase.

The cupboard down the television - in which we displayed the countdown - was covered with giantic paper flowers and it locked a laptop. Once they discovered the password to it -the missing numbers from the card deck,- the participants had to pass a small quiz about Carroll’s less known facts. They had all of the information inside a locked board.

Moving to the left side, we also prepared a smaczny Tea Party, with an Unbirthday cake, a tea set and all! The mini-cupcakes hid the key to the cookies box and the flowers the secret flashlight for the note with invisible ink. I am still surprised that nothing was broken here.

We also included a “waterfall” and a stand for the plenty of plushy cats we had.

Finally, when the kids found the ten pages, they had to take the highlighted words and put them in order to create the password to go out again. We are happy to say that all of the participants managed to escape and save the kingdom of Wonderland!!

We did an amazing team job and everyone in the library gave their bit to make the room look professional

So thank so much to Mrs. Ewa and Kalina for bringing so many old decorations; to Kalina also for being the “bad guardian;” Sylwia for coming up with great ideas and being the Mad Hatter; to Bartek and Kuba for helping with some puzzles; to Marine, the Rabbit, for her unconditional support; and of course to all the participants, whom we hope had as a good time as us! It was GREAT!