With axes, escape rooms and unforgettable nights of fun, Mystery Mayhem Escapes and Axe Throwing has been serving the Slippery Rock community for over nine years.
With over 25,000 axes thrown and 15,000 players escaped, Mystery Mayhem is one of the highest-rated escape rooms in the area.
Mystery Mayhem is a great spot for birthday parties or get togethers with friends and family, as well as a fun team-building activity for workplaces. All activities are private, so whether your crew is doing an escape room or axe throwing, you will not be paired with strangers. While the activities are designed to be challenging to adult minds, kids are also welcomed.
Mystery Mayhem has three different rooms to escape from, and each takes about an hour to complete. They range from $25 to $35 per person.
One option is The Lion’s Den, a jungle-based escape room where you and your fellow explorers are stranded after a hungry lion stole your keys.
In the Casino Heist escape room, you and your group must devise a plan to steal from the most corrupt casino in the city, or your “inside-man” will turn you in.
The last escape room offered is Atlantis: Secrets of the Deep. Here, you and your group are tasked by the U.S. Navy to find and recover a lost submarine. The submarine was on a top-secret mission looking for the lost city of Atlantis, until all communications ceased mid-transmission.
Mystery Mayhem’s axe-throwing is more than just throwing axes at a board. At Mystery Mayhem, the target is projected upon, offering games like blackjack, bowling, battleship and more to play with the axes. Axe throwing is $20 per person.
Scott Jones, the co-owner of Mystery Mayhem Escapes and Axe Throwing discussed how they came about opening the business, his favorite room and how the Slippery Rock community has supported them.
“So we started back in 2016, and actually, we went on a vacation down to Florida. My son had just turned 13 at the time, and he wanted to do an escape room…there were nine of us down there, and we did an escape room and just loved it. Seeing the kids with their phones down, working together, that was so great to see,” Jones said.
Jones and his family originally come from Grove City. He originally planned to open a meat processing business, but the building lacked the necessary safety and health features.
“We found this building wasn’t going to work with the drainage and different things needed for a meat shop, so we decided to kind of reverse course and start the escape room.”
Jones elaborated on how difficult the transition was going from meat processor to escape room creator.
“It was definitely difficult. As far as building the rooms, I have some construction experience, but as far as handling electronics and software, that was definitely a learning curve.”
Jones discusses how the rooms evolved, starting with a zombie-themed room with barely any electronics, to now fully-mechanical rooms.
“We try to get better with each room. Our first room it was very basic; there was one tech puzzle and everything else was locks and boxes…the Lion’s Den room, which we opened up actually about a year ago, that one we implemented some new software. So it kind of runs in a sequence…you have to do one thing and then it triggers something else to start, and then the second half of the room will start after everything is finished in the first half,” Jones explained.
Jones also included some details about an upcoming an escape room and the possibility of opening a second location.
“I’m sure y’all saw in the SRU (Slippery Rock University) Homecoming parade our limousine we have, so the plan is to build that into an escape game. Its like a 32-foot SUV limo, so it’s got a pretty high ceiling, so you can kind of move around a little bit compared to car or sedan style. So yeah we want to implement a little game…” Jones said.
“You know, we probably will do two-pronged approach, where we can pick you up and take you out to dinner or something while you do the escape room. Or we could take it to different companies and universities in the parking lot…we just started on getting a piece of property by the outlet mall, and we are looking at building a second location. But that’s a ways away now with the whole engineering process…but we plan to have eight to 10 axe throwing lanes there,” Jones said.
Jones and Mystery Mayhem thank the Slippery Rock area for their support. They invite students and teachers on campus to come and enjoy the fun.
“Its been really well, we’ve done really well. I’d say most of our business comes from families and college couples getting together for date nights, you know? We are close to a lot of other escape rooms, and we belong to plenty of Facebook groups, and they say you can’t open an escape room unless you’re in like a 300,000 population area. But you know, we kind of get to prove them all wrong,” Jones said.
