As a small-town girl from Alabama, I have found myself in some unusual places. Some of those places include the top of a camel in the Sahara of Morocco, ​the front-row of an Adele concert in Seattle, and riding in a van alongside a German cyclist along the Natchez Trace (444 miles) so I could open the door and provide water and snacks along the way. As I look back on my life, I often think, “How did I get here?” Imagine my surprise when I travel to Las Vegas, and I end up locked in a room trying to “rescue a hostage.”

Maybe I should back up a bit… I had traveled to Las Vegas to visit family. We had seen most of the sights on The Strip, so we were looking for something “different.” My sister had mentioned Lockdown Las Vegas. This was a new concept to me, so I had many questions. “Will it be scary? How will I feel locked in a room? Is it worth the price?” Like many of the other unusual places I had found myself, I was suddenly involved and committed.

As my family entered Lockdown Las Vegas, the staff was extremely welcoming, as if they had known us for years. They explained the idea of a Lockdown room and set-up the scenario in which we were being placed. It was time to begin. The Lockdown room was a series of riddles and puzzles where we each had to use strategies and clues to solve our way out in under 60 minutes, in this case – rescuing a hostage. At this point, I’m going to “lockdown” the details, because this is an adventure that you will want to experience for yourself. We were able to escape in under 60 minutes, which is no easy feat for a Southern family that usually cannot go one holiday without everyone getting “madder than a wet hen!”

Our Lockdown experience is one that we still bring up in conversations, even months later. It was a time for us to spend together, working together, and laughing together about how serious we made the entire experience, as if we were truly in charge of saving someone’s life. Of my many visits to Las Vegas, Lockdown is at the top of my lists of adventures I have experienced. I never got to meet the “hostage” that we rescued, but if I could, I would say, “Bless your heart.”

Sara McCutcheon, Cullman, AL