MEXICO — Hidden clues. Challenging puzzles. A circus-themed mystery. And time is running out.

“When you go through the curtain, it’s like you’re in the backstage of a circus with the music,” describes Nick Graham, co-owner of Hoodwinked Escape Rooms.

Called Mysteries of the Menagerie, the 90-minute immersive adventure is set in a mysterious local circus, and players must unravel the storyline before time runs out.

The escape room is in the River Valley Recreation Center, 15 Recreation Drive, Mexico. Graham, with his partner Jessica Rodrigue, said this new escape room opened in 2024 and took about a year to build.

“We’re trying to bring something special that people haven’t seen,” Graham said. “We have made a lot of effort to put a lot of fun stuff in here. There are fun things that you would like to do at a circus. There are a lot of surprise moments that tend to jump people, but it’s just unexpected, but not intended to be scary at all.”

Graham works as a special education teacher at Western Foothills Regional Program. Rodrigue manages the laboratory at Rumford Hospital. When they’re not at their jobs, they are often making improvements to the escape room, most of it homemade.

Building a Zoltar machine was what led to the idea for doing a circus escape room. Graham said it’s the most interesting part.

Zoltar machines are animatronic fortune-tellers, made famous in the 1988 movie “Big.”

“I built him from the ground up,” he said.

The circus tent is the item that likely draws the most attention.

“It’s hand sewn,” Rodrigue said. “We bought the fabric in a big roll. We cut every single piece, designed and sewed it by hand to fit the room.”

“Such a big part in making you feel like you’re part of the circus is the circus tent,” Graham added.

There are items here and there that were found elsewhere, but the costumes were made by hand and there is a crocheted cat.

Graham said he and Rodrigue like building the escape room, “and we like watching people experience it, more than trying to make a business out of it.”

Making much of the set piece by hand has had its own rewards, they said.

“We could go out and just buy a bunch of props and put together an escape room real quick,” Rodrigue said. “But it’s about the building (of it). Everything in here was made by us, with our own two hands.”

“There’s a lot of stuff in here that are not obvious when you first come in. I think some people come in and wonder, ‘How do you spend 90 minutes in here?'” Graham said.

Graham said the number of clues they could give to assist someone in the escape room is unlimited.

“We want you to get through,” he said. “Sometimes, we have groups come in and they need no hints. Other times, groups have come in and needs stacks of hints.”

Graham said escape rooms can cater to the experts as well as the beginner player. He said they haven’t made any specific adaptations for skill level, but by adding or taking away items from the set, or by giving more or less information to players, they can vary the difficulty.

“We enjoy it. It’s a lot of fun, and we want other people to enjoy it,” Graham said. “We have … fun watching people go through the room and discover stuff.”

Admission for one to four players is $130, and $35 for anyone after four people. Graham said they can also accommodate some birthday parties.

The availability to the escape room is around the couple’s work schedules. Rodrigue said generally it’s in the afternoons during the workweek and on the weekends.

The escape room had about a couple hundred visitors last year, according to Graham.

“We don’t stay super busy, and we only want to be so busy. We do have full-time jobs. We do this because we love it. All the money we make gets reinvested into the second room,” he said.

Because the escape room hours are limited, its remote location in the state doesn’t pose a problem.

“I think if we were going to use this as our full-time occupation, then we would be concerned because we’re off the beaten path,” Rodrigue said.

Graham said the town of Mexico and the recreation department have been supportive of the business.

“We’re our own company, but we really feel like we’re part of the recreation department, just one more activity for people to do in the area,” Graham said. “I feel like if I won the lottery tomorrow, I’d probably find a place to retire and build an escape room.”

DOING ‘CIRCUS’ RIGHT

Graham and Rodrigue said they have visited more than 300 escape rooms across the country. Besides the enjoyment, they also get lots of ideas.

“We’re always bouncing stuff off from each other, especially when we leave escape rooms,” Rodrigue said.

And their sons, Logan, 18, and Liam, 15, sometimes visit these escape rooms with them, including ones in Tennessee last summer.

“It’s a fun family activity,” Rodrigue said.

Graham said other circus-themed escape rooms they toured didn’t feel “the way we thought a circus should be done.”

“We wanted it to be immersive, so that it kind of feels like you’re at a circus,” Rodrigue said. “And a lot of rooms that we did, it was missing that aspect.”

Graham said the best escape rooms in the world are in Montreal. The best ones, he said, cost $1 million to build, and the Montreal Tourism Board is a partner with some of them. Some of them also partner with local theater companies so there are live actors in the rooms, Rodrigue added.

When opening an escape room, Rodrigue said it’s important to play test it for awhile and run people through it “to try to tweak the puzzles.” When they opened the circus room, adjustments were made to make it just right.

Graham has begun construction on another escape room next door with a different theme. He hinted it could be completed by as early as this summer.

Most of their patrons come from out of town to play, Graham said. They also come from other states, such as Virginia and New Hampshire.

Graham said having the second escape room will make the business even more attractive for enthusiasts.

“Our next room is going to bring it to another level, a bit more fantastical — not something people have seen before,” he said.

One misconception is that once you’re locked in, you can’t get out unless you figure everything out.

“That’s not true. It’s illegal to lock somebody in a room. One door is always unlocked, and then you have the door you’re trying to get out of,” Rodrigue said.

Graham said another misconception about escape rooms is that “our goal is to fool you so that you can’t (get) out. It’s the competitive, ‘Can you solve our escape room? Am I smarter than you or are you smarter than my escape room?’ And that’s not really the case. We work really hard to make sure that everybody can get through the room.”

In the U.S., there are rules that include a way out, but Graham said in escape rooms overseas, there’s not as much regulation, so you could really be locked in.

Graham said that Hoodwinked Escape Rooms was nominated for a 2025 Top Escape Rooms Project Enthusiasts’ Choice Award for the second year in a row. This prestigious international award recognizes the world’s best escape rooms, as voted on by the most experienced escape room enthusiasts who have collectively played hundreds of thousands of rooms globally.

He said they were one of only 1,185 rooms nominated worldwide, and the only location in Maine to have been nominated since 2021. There were roughly half a million escape rooms played by members in 39 different countries.

Hoodwinked was the area’s first escape room in 2019. More details can be found at hoodwinkedme.com.

Other escape rooms in Maine can be found at Vault 51 in Lincoln, Bangor Escape Rooms, Crack the Code in Brewer, Escape Augusta, Trapt Escape Rooms in Rockland, Escape Room Brunswick, The Escape Room in Portland and Maine Escape Games in South Portland. For even more information about escape rooms, players can use the Morty app.