DESIRÉE DECOSTE

STAFF WRITER

Escape Camp Picton (ECP) is the name and escape room is the game.

The year: 1943. Location: Occupied France. Timeline: World War II (WWII).

You’re in training for the Royal Canadian Air Force and have been selected for an important Special Operative’s mission, recruited as a citizen spy. You and your team must enter occupied France and secure classified information from a local manufacturing guild which is secretly a front for the French Allied Resistance.

Unfortunately the resistance had a double agent and you’ll have one hour from finding the clues, to ‘destroying the evidence’ before the enemy zeros in on your location.

ECP is the newest attraction at Loch-Sloy airport, the former Camp Picton and is the design brain child of Vanessa Rieger and Glen Wallis.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED (left to right) Rebecca Dewey, Tracey Clarke, Dylan Wallis, Michelle Yoksimovich and Stephanie Shackelton were all part of a group who participated in the escape room ‘A Secret Guild’ at Escape Camp Picton. The newly established business is located at Loch-Sloy and for a limited time have a pop-up escape room running only until Halloween. (Desirée Decoste/Gazette Staff)

With two custom built rooms and now a pop-up escape room, the whole operation is designed and managed by five County-based artists and creative producers, who includes Julianne Snepsts, Susan Wallis, Paul Snepsts, as well as Rieger and Wallis.

“My step-father Glen (Wallis) and I got into doing escape rooms as a family endeavour,” Rieger stated. “We had went to a lot of escape rooms and had this generally idea we could make one, so we put our heads together and started coming up with ideas. And because both Glen and I work out of Loch Sloy and have our own workshops here, it seemed like the perfect fit.”

Being inspired by the location, the decommissioned Camp Picton which was built as part of the British Commonwealth Air Training Program in 1941, the setting is the perfect scene for blending heritage, history and an unforgettable game experience.

“It’s such a unique and beautiful property,” Rieger expressed. “The old barrack, the history and the entire environment was already set here, so we started writing scripts to create a WWII themed escape room specifically on the topic of spies because both Glen and I really love a good spy story.”

Michelle Yoksimovich along with Rebecca Dewey, Tracey Clarke, Stephanie Shackelton and Dylan Wallis were all part of a group that took on ‘A Secret Guild’. Yoksimovich said the escape room was great and she had a lot of fun and would like to try a different escape room again.

Rieger and company are also offering a new edition to the escape room scene in the area as ECP.

The group’s Halloween pop-up, Area 54 is a mixture of Area 51 and Studio 54 to give it a 70’s feel and make it more of a period piece.

Homemade props for the pop-up Halloween escape room Area 54.

“We again looked at the Picton airport for the pop-up and came up with the theme of an alien crash site a la Area 51,” said Rieger. “But we wanted to give it a 70’s feel because of all the old equipment we have so that’s why we were inspired by Studio 54 the disco. so it’s a little mix of both to make it more of a period piece, and at the end of the escape room, if you save the day, you end up in Area 54 which is an alien disco.”

The Halloween pop-up will only run from Oct. 18 – Oct. 31 so make sure to book before it’s gone. Hours of operation are Mon. 11 a.m. – 6 p.m., Tue.-Wed. closed, Thurs.-Sat. 11 a.m. – 9 p.m. and Sun. 11 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Reiger expressed how satisfied she was with being able to put all of her skills to work and basically having the entire prerequisite to do the job without realizing until starting the build of the escape rooms.

“I thought ‘wow, I am made to build escape rooms,’ and I didn’t realize it because I never really thought about it as a serious job,” Reiger said. “But now that the rooms are up and running, my whole background and training in arts and in trades has made it so this is the perfect outlet to put all those various abilities to work.”

For more information please visit escapecamppicton.com

or email info@escapecamppicton.com

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