Petersen Automotive Museum Hosted Very First ‘Escape the Petersen’
The Petersen Automotive Museum in Southern California hosted the first-ever Escape Room event for Halloween
For those who love cars and adore the idea of working as a team to solve clues in order to escape, the Petersen Automotive Museum has the perfect event. In the spirit of Halloween, the esteemed automotive museum held their inaugural “Escape the Petersen” event. Micaela Dempsey, the museum’s Programming Manager, spoke with 6SpeedOnline to give readers a taste of what the event was like, and their thinking behind creating it.
Dempsey says that in order to help bring people to the museum that normally wouldn’t see the museum as more than just a building full of old cars, they incorporated their best exhibits.
“We wanted to open up the exhibits to people who may not have thought to visit the museum otherwise,” she said. “With the escape room event, the museum becomes so much more than just a car museum.”
An escape room, for those who’ve yet to partake, is a room that is filled with clues a group of people have to work together to find in order to escape before the time limit runs out. Dempsey indicated that 120 tickets were made for the event, and that they’d quickly sold out.
“We planned it our to try and use the exhibits and cars on display,” she said. “Our Splendor and Speed exhibits had a room, which features our ‘crown jewels‘ cars and tells the story of the museum, a little bit about the collection and the cars themselves, but in a very different and fun way.”
Six rooms were a part of Escape the Petersen, though Dempsey’s team incorporated a way to keep people coming back.
“Each room has an overarching theme, so if you come back next year, people will be able to see their part and continue the adventure until they’ve done all six rooms,” she said.
For extra curious visitors, an add-on ticket to the museum’s Vault could be purchased – which gave them the chance to look at the museum’s most coveted collection cars. Visitors were able to enjoy food, drinks and sweets before and after escaping one of the rooms, and had time to meander the museum’s offerings.
Dempsey says that the museum is already planning on offering the event for next year’s Halloween season. This year’s event happened Friday October 27 from 6:30 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.
