Waldorf Astoria Escape Room: Suite 39A

Five Families escape room guide · 301 Park Avenue, Midtown Manhattan · March 1947

Frank Costello's second set of books, and twelve minutes between the house detective's sweeps. The Waldorf Astoria is one of the Five Families escape rooms: a 3D recreation of a real scene from mob history that you walk around as your own mobster, searching for evidence and cracking a four-digit padlock before the clock runs out. This guide covers the real story behind the room, what you'll find inside, and how to get out.

The real story

The Daily Mirror was a Hearst tabloid and one of the best-selling papers in New York in 1947.

Costello was known for his expensive tastes and his careful dress. The newspapers called him the Prime Minister of the Underworld.

Small 35mm cameras were used to copy documents in secret. One roll of film could hold a whole ledger, a page at a time.

Costello made his first fortune bootlegging during Prohibition. When Mayor La Guardia drove his slot machines out of New York in the 1930s, he moved them to New Orleans.

Frank Costello's financial records were never successfully obtained by investigators during this period. Whatever documentation existed of his criminal operations remained hidden until his death in 1973.

Attempts to steal rather than copy documents from mob-connected premises consistently failed due to the speed with which the loss was noticed and reported.

Setting the scene

Frank Costello keeps his real books in Suite 39A of the Waldorf Astoria. Not the books his accountant knows about. The other ones — the ledger that shows exactly where the money comes from and where it goes.

You've been sent to photograph it. Not steal it. Photograph it. Put it back exactly as you found it. He'll never know you were here.

The house detective does a sweep of this corridor every twelve minutes. The last one passed four minutes ago. You have eight minutes before he comes back.

Get along the corridor and into the suite, search the drawing room, then the bedroom. Costello keeps the service door at the back of the bedroom padlocked. Find the ledger. Photograph every page. Get out down the service stairs. Leave no trace.

Before you get inside, you make your own way there. Drive up Park Avenue at night, past the jewellers and the furriers, to the Waldorf Astoria's entrance. A green arrow shows you the door.

Three rooms in one

The Waldorf Astoria isn't one room, it's three, and you only see the next one once you've earned it. Each has three things to search. Search everything in the room you're in and a door unlocks, a glowing arrow shows you the way through, and the next part of the scene opens up. The clock keeps running the whole time: 5 minutes for all three.

The padlock code is spread across all three, so you can't escape from the corridor. Move fast in the first room: the last room is where people run out of time.

What you'll find in each room

There are 9 things to search in the Waldorf Astoria, three in each room. 4 of them hide a digit of the padlock code, 2 are dead ends put there to waste your time, and the rest fill in the story. The glass on the side table, the wall safe behind the painting and the Morning Tribune stay locked until you've found 3 clues. The ledger, the sound from the corridor and the service door stay locked until you've found 6 clues.

First room: The corridor

Second room: The drawing room

Third room: The bedroom

The Waldorf Astoria escape room walkthrough

1. Take in the room. Drag to look around and walk with the stick or arrow keys. Question marks show everything you can search.
2. Clear each room. Search all three things in the corridor and the way through to the drawing room unlocks. Clear that and you're into the bedroom. Follow the glowing arrow to the next door.
3. Find the four digits. Each piece of evidence that matters gives you one digit, and tells you which position it goes in. Stuck? The hints below point you to the right room, not the answer.
4. Ignore the red herrings. Some items look important and aren't. Don't spend the clock on them.
5. Open the padlock with the four digits in order, before the 5 minutes run out.
6. Make the call. You'll choose how it ends: Finish photographing the ledger, replace it, and hide in the bathroom until the detective passes; Take the ledger and go — you can photograph it somewhere safer; Put everything back and leave now — half the job is better than getting caught. Each ending tells you what really happened.

Tips for escaping

• Read each piece of evidence to the end: the digit is usually in the last line.
• If the clock's getting away from you, a hint costs 25 Mob Coins and an extra minute costs 50.
• Holding a drink or a cigar from the Social Club gives you 20 extra seconds in every room.
• On a phone, turn it sideways for a wider view. Your evidence, digits and the padlock are in the pull-out case file.

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Questions

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