TEAMS of students who successfully cracked an escape room were greeted with cheers, confetti cannons and a photoshoot on their return to the real world.

Event management students from Coleg Llandrillo’s Rhos-on-Sea campus spent months putting together an escape room as part of their foundation degree course.

They were originally given the task to create something fun for the student body, to help bring people together after recent challenging times.

They decided on an escape room as an entertaining, pop-up activity which could be located anywhere on campus - a form of “escapism” to stimulate interaction with friends and boost student welfare.

The room itself was called “Colour Crisis”, dressed in almost entirely black and white, except for a pink part which was fundamental to the participants’ escapes.

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The experience began with a video recording of the game master explaining the overall challenge, consisting of seven challenging games: from cracking Morse code to solving complex riddles…whilst surrounded by spotlights and ominous music.

After successfully completing a game, participants were given a key from a computer keyboard.

After amassing all the keyboard keys, they had to work out where they went on the qwerty keyboard to discover the password to the computer.

This then opened a huge box containing more than 30 keys, but only one fitted the lock to the pink door and their freedom.

Once the team escaped they were greeted with cheers, confetti cannons and a photo shoot.

They had one hour to complete the task.

They could ask for clues from the game master, but each clue added one minute to their overall time.

The objective was not only to escape, but to be the fastest group, in order to claim the prize.

“L5 Escapes” is the name of the company that the organising students created.

The enterprising FdA Event Management Year Two students were Adam Owen from Conwy, Kai Davies (Llanddulas), Jess Alexander (Llandudno Junction) and Phil Lynes (Caernarfon).

Lecturer and course coordinator Claire Jones said: “The room took a number of lectures/weeks to create as the team conducted a series of market research activities to ensure they made the best choices for the task.

“They also had to source the materials, paint the set within the room, come up with the games, conduct time trials and set up dynamic lighting and sound, to name but a few tasks.

“All of this formed part of their overall assessment and will enable the students to add practical experience to enhance their CVs once they have completed their studies and enter the industry.”

On the day, more than 40 students took the challenge, and were wholeheartedly positive about the event.

The event management foundation degree course works on a one-study-day-a-week model so is perfect for those who are wishing to gain a degree alongside other commitments.

The course is academic (validated by Bangor University) but also contains many vocational opportunities to get hands-on experience of the industry across many fields: from live music gigs and national award ceremonies, to educational events and conferences.