Booking an escape room for two friends takes ninety seconds online. Booking one for fourteen colleagues, a budget code and a partridge in a pear tree is a slightly different job — and the difference between a smooth team booking and a car park full of confusion is usually five questions the organiser didn’t know to ask. Here they are.
1. “Is the booking actually private?”
At some venues, smaller groups get merged with strangers to fill rooms. Fine on a city stag weekend; horrible for a work event. Ask directly. (At Locked In Cornwall every booking is private — your room is your team’s alone. Worth confirming wherever you book.)
2. “How do you handle groups bigger than one room?”
Rooms take 2–7 players, and most work groups are bigger, so the real question is how the venue splits and schedules teams. Simultaneous rooms racing the same hour is the ideal — instant competition, shared start and finish, one combined debrief in the foyer. Staggered slots work too but leave half the group waiting. Ask which you’re getting, and ask how team assignment works (pro tip: split up the departments; mixed teams are the whole point).
3. “What’s the arrival and timing plan?”
Get the boring logistics in writing: arrival time, total duration, and what happens if Steve from finance is ten minutes late (answer: Steve compresses everyone’s briefing, so tell Steve an earlier time). A 60-minute game is roughly 90 minutes door to door. If you’re building lunch or an afternoon around it, plan from the finish time, not the start.
4. “Can you invoice, and who confirms numbers when?”
The two admin questions that cause every headache. Some venues are card-online only; if you need a proper invoice against a PO, establish that upfront. And numbers drift — someone’s off sick, someone brings the new starter — so ask when the final headcount locks and what the flexibility is either side. A venue that’s hosted corporate groups before will have ready answers; that readiness is itself a good sign.
5. “Which room suits our lot?”
Give the venue an honest sketch of the group — ages, escape room experience, how competitive things get at the Christmas quiz — and let them recommend. Mixed-ability groups want the accessible room; veteran puzzle-heads want the hard one; and if half the group is quietly dreading it, say so, because that changes the recommendation entirely. Ours would be Puzzle Escape 2.0 for mixed teams, The Smoke House Curse for the confident, Pasty Escape when in doubt.
The mistakes organisers make
Booking the hard room to impress the boss (book for the least enthusiastic player, not the most). Scheduling the game after the pub rather than before (pressure plus pints equals chaos, and not the good kind). And over-programming — the game, the debrief and the meal is a full event; you don’t also need a quiz.
The short version
Private room, simultaneous splits, timings in writing, invoice sorted, honest room choice. Five questions, one email, done — you’ll look like you’ve organised a dozen of these.
If Cornwall’s your patch, our team building page covers group logistics at Locked In Cornwall, or skip the reading and ring 01209 862796 with your headcount — organising team bookings is our actual job, and we’re happy to make it look like yours.