An escape room website where groups pick a room and book a slot

The room page is the product page

Groups choose a room the way people choose a film: a strong premise, then a quick check that it suits everyone. Each room page should carry the same facts in the same place, so a group can compare three rooms in a minute.

Story

Two or three sentences of premise. Tease, don't spoil.

Players

Minimum and maximum, and the number you'd recommend for first-timers.

Difficulty

On a stated scale, with the escape rate described in words rather than invented figures: "most first-time teams need a few hints".

Duration

Game time, plus how early to arrive for the briefing.

Ages

Minimum age, and whether under-16s need an adult in the room.

Scare level and content notes

Darkness, loud sounds, actors, confined spaces, themes some players may find upsetting.

Physical access

Steps, crawling, kneeling, whether the room can be played from a wheelchair.

A CMS collection with these fields gives every room its own page and keeps the format identical. Use your own photos of the set, lit as players see it. Keep puzzle close-ups out of the gallery; regulars notice spoilers.

Booking: one room, one slot, one group

Set up each room as a separate service on Anticode's booking calendar. The booking form asks for the service (the room), the day and the time, plus the lead booker's name, phone and email. Two visitors can't book the same room in the same slot, the calendar always shows the coming days, and it refuses dates in the past or more than 120 days ahead. Start times are fixed, though: six a day from 09:00 to 17:30, with Mondays skipped, so evening games need another booking route, and you confirm each booking yourself.

That fits most escape room operations, but check the edges before you rely on it:

• No deposits or payment at booking. If you want payment up front, follow the confirmation with a payment link and say clearly when the slot is held until.
• No player count on the built-in form. Ask for it in your confirmation, or use a custom booking request form with a field for team size.
• No sync with an existing ticketing or reservation system. Don't run both for the same room.
• No linked rooms. If two rooms share a set for head-to-head games, that needs managing by hand.

Our guide to adding a booking calendar covers where a simple calendar works and where it doesn't.

Group size and pricing

Escape room prices are usually per player and fall as the team grows, which confuses people when it's shown as a single number. A small table on each room page (or one shared table) showing the per-player price for two, three, four and up to the maximum players is clearer than "from" pricing. State peak and off-peak times if prices differ, and whether the booker pays for the whole team.

A custom form tied to a formula can also give a quote: the visitor enters the number of players, and the thank-you page shows the total. Formulas work only with numbers, so a day-of-week price difference is easier to explain in the table than to calculate. It's calculated on the server when they send the form, not live as they type.

Team building and private hire

Corporate groups need a different path from friends booking on a Friday. Give them a page that covers running several rooms at once, the total capacity across your venue, meeting space for a debrief, food and drink nearby, and invoicing. A custom form can ask for company, contact, preferred dates, group size and budget. Send those submissions to a Slack channel or HubSpot with a connector so they're picked up quickly.

Gift vouchers

Vouchers sell well around Christmas and birthdays. The site has one payment link per account, which every buy button opens, so point it at a page at your provider that lists voucher values and room experiences, and put the buy button on a vouchers page. Explain how the code is delivered, how long it lasts and how to redeem it when booking. The site doesn't generate or track voucher codes; your payment provider or you do that. See selling gift vouchers online.

Design and mistakes

Escape rooms are where a dark, atmospheric site makes sense, but contrast still matters on a phone in daylight. Dark theme with Brutalist (Archivo) or Technical (IBM Plex Sans) and an orange or red action colour gives drama while keeping the booking button obvious. Common mistakes on generated sites: a looping video hero that pushes room choice below the fold, timers and flicker effects that ignore reduced-motion settings, and no address or parking details because the theme was the focus. Anticode's design gate checks reduced-motion support and alt text before publishing.

What it doesn't do

• No deposits, card payments or voucher redemption on the site.
• No player-count field or per-player pricing on the built-in booking form.
• No sync with other booking systems, and no recurring bookings.
• No embedded trailers; link to the video on another site.

Questions people ask

Can each escape room have its own booking calendar?

Yes. Set each room up as a separate service, and the calendar takes one booking per room per day and time slot.

Can customers pay when they book?

Not on the booking form. Send a payment link after the booking, or sell vouchers through the site's payment link, pointed at a list of options at your provider.

How should I show difficulty?

Use the same scale on every room page, explain it once, and describe how teams usually do in words rather than percentages you can't back up.