Oak Brook is a wonderful place near western part of Chicago, in a village in DuPage County with a marginal area in Cook County, Illinois.

Renowned for its shopping precinct—the Oakbrook Center—it’s strategically positioned near Interstate 88 and Route 83. Inaugurated in 1962, this commercial haven ranks as the second-largest shopping hub in the entire Chicago metropolitan expanse.

Located just 30 minutes from downtown, this outdoor retail hotspot in Chicago’s western suburbs is the ideal  for watching a movie, enjoying numerous entertainment facilities and relaxing spa treatment.

Current anchor stores include Lord & Taylor, Macy’s, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom and Sears. Other major retailers include Apple, Crate & Barrel, Mark Shale, Microsoft, Pottery Barn, Tesla and Pinstripes. The center also has more than 25 restaurants, like Antico Posto, Cheesecake Factory, The Clubhouse, Corner Bakery, Maggiano’s Little Italy, Mon Ami Gabi, Reel Club, Stir Crazy and Wildfire.

The Oak Brook shopping center is surrounded by gardens filled with flowers, fountains, trees and ponds, this open-air center attracts a wide customer base from the entire Chicago metropolitan area and the Midwest.

Oak Brook Promenade: An Oasis of Elegance

Beautiful shopping center with  European style architecture, which provides retail, restaurant and café space. The center has a wide area for walking, a beautiful pond with walking trail, outdoor seating, and fascinating landscape.  Main shops are:  Allen Edmonds, Arhaus Furniture, Helzberg Diamonds, Joseph A. Bank, Select Comfort and Thomasville Furniture, Fusion Academy. Promenade restaurants include Omaha Steaks, La Barra, Kona Grill, Labriola Bakery and Café and McCormick & Schmick’s.

Elevate Your Chicago Weekend with FocusTimeEscape: An Unmissable Experience

If your weekend plans include an excursion to downtown Chicago, consider augmenting your itinerary with a visit to FocusTimeEscape in Westchester, situated in close proximity to the Oak Brook Center.

Escape room (or Escape game, also puzzle game, adventure game, breakout room) is a modern innovative immersive attraction in the form of puzzles which should be solved in the locked room during particular time, usually 60 minutes. The goal is to find the answer to a problem or mystery and way out from the locked room.

The first this concept was proposed in 2003 in USA (Indianapolis). The room was called True Dungeon, in which there were combinations of mental and physical puzzles to accomplish a goal in a limited amount of time and game rules are based on the third edition of Dungeons & Dragons.

After that the idea spread though the world, especially in Kyoto (Japan) in 2007, in Australia and Singapore by the 2011 and other countries.

In 2012 a Swiss physics professor created a scientific escape game for his students. The game was later offered to the public under the name of Adventure Rooms and distributed as a franchise in twenty countries. The Adventure Rooms introduced scientific puzzles (e.g. hidden infrared or polarized codes).

By November 2019, there were estimated to be over 50,000 escape rooms worldwide.

Japan

Japan is one of the countries where the concept developed quickly and broadly.   The first real-life escape game was created by Takao Kato in Kyoto in 2007. Mr. Kato took inspiration from the “escape the room” video games and later his idea spread over the world including Budapest, Bern, Australia, San Francisco, Seattle, St. Louis, New York City, and Nashville with a name real escape game established by company SCRAP and it’s branches.

In Tokyo you may find escape room called InSPYre, spy-themed escape game, where you need to enter the secret base of a criminal organization called Black-Max.  There are 4 missions to solve a puzzle of enemy’s plan. Each task duration is only 10 minutes.

More Japanese like escape game is called Nazobako and located in Tokyo Asakusa. You may choose from games   “Zen”, “Samurai Espionage” and “A Winter’s Tale: The Secret Curse of Ice” and  become a real samurai in Edo period. You may even wear special costumes and take a photo as a souvenir.

USA 

In USA there are around 2,350 escape room facilities  (2019 year data). The first one was opened in the United States in San Francisco, California. Though in 2012 there were only few such facilities, the idea incredibly spread by 2015 and become a great alternative to Halloween haunted houses as escape rooms are opened  during the whole year.

There are some outstanding  ideas like escape game to retrieve a stolen piece of art (The Heist, Nashville), to finish homework in a school (Playground, Dallas), to change the course of history on  Titanic as a crew member (Titanic Escape Room, California).

The hardest escape room in the world is located in USA and is called Caretaker. Deep within the dark recesses of the forests in Oregon lies an evil like no other. A disbarred geneticist has unleashed giant wolf-like creates onto the town of Fair Oaks. Deep within these same woods lives a hermit the locals have come to know as The Caretaker and you need to help him to find a solution.

The scariest room in the world is The Basement located in California, USA. Ranked as a top of horror escape room where you need to escape a cannibalistic murderer played by a live actor. 

And we propose an interesting escape room called FocusTimeEscape, located in Westchester, Chicago, IL. with original and impressive Area 51—a government laboratory. It is widely believed that certain experimentation has been taking place within area 51, specifically the attempt to exchange human blood with undocumented fluids for some bizarre medical research. These alleged experimentation may be nothing more than media hype, however some say there is more going on. You must make a certain discovery and find out the truth behind Area 51.

World

Other interesting escape room ideas:

SHERLOCKED in Amsterdam, Netherlands – escape room is inside an actual bank vault, you have 90 minutes to steal a mysterious item from inside it.

ESCAPE BOATS-SOS (Ireland) – the first ever live escape room on a boat now open in Dublin’s city center in Grand Canal Dock.

ESCHATOLOGY – the world’s fastest growing escape-the-room franchise, located in  Florida, Texas and Chile. It is a high adrenaline escape game where players are locked inside a themed room and must complete their mission before time runs out.