LAUREN PLATT

Themed Entertainment Engineer

-Escape from Wonderland-

Project Overview

I worked with 20 other fellow members of Carnegie Mellon University's Theme Park Engineering Group to brainstorm, design, prototype, build, install, and run an Alice in Wonderland themed escape room for the Carnegie Mellon University Spring Carnival. In the experience, teams enter a room themed to the Mad Hatter's Tea Party and have 30 minutes to solve 3 different puzzles: a logic puzzle using pages of the Alice in Wonderland book, a cryptography puzzle using cards hidden around the room and a rotating Mad Hatter's hat, and a musical Makey Makey puzzle using teacups and tea saucers.

I was involved in all aspects of the design and execution of the escape room, but I am most proud of my work on the musical Makey Makey puzzle. In the musical Makey Makey puzzle, guests read a riddle which hints that guests have to somehow play the song "Happy Birthday" for the Mad Hatter's  Unbirthday Tea Party! To play the song, guests place real physical teacups on saucers. With Makey Makey technology, when the connections between the teacups and saucers are made, a single musical note will play. Teams must place the teacups onto the saucers in the correct order and play the song "Happy Birthday" note by note.  When the teams have successfully played the song, an image will appear on the screen in the room with Scotty Dog (CMU's mascot) and a birthday cake. The number of candles on the birthday cake indicate one of the numbers in the final lock combination. This puzzle concept and use of Makey Makey technology was my original idea and I worked with Angie Mendenhall, a fellow member of TPEG, to further iterate, prototype, test, build, and execute the idea.

Final Escape Room

We created 3 identical escape rooms to allow multiple groups to go through the experience at once and increase our guest capacity. In the end, we hosted hundreds of guests in our escape room over Carnegie Mellon University Spring Carnival 2023!

Musical Makey Makey Puzzle

The musical Makey Makey puzzle was the part of the escape room that I was most involved in designing and executing. In this puzzle, guests read a riddle which hints that guests have to somehow play the song "Happy Birthday" for the Mad Hatter's  Unbirthday Tea Party! To play the song, guests place real physical teacups on saucers. With Makey Makey technology, when the connections between the teacups and saucers are made, a single musical note will play. Teams must place the teacups onto the saucers in the correct order and play the song "Happy Birthday" note by note.  When the teams have successfully played the song, an image will appear on the screen in the room with Scotty Dog (CMU's mascot) and a birthday cake. The number of candles on the birthday cake indicate one of the numbers in the final lock combination. This puzzle concept and use of Makey Makey technology was my original idea and I worked with Angie Mendenhall, a fellow member of TPEG, to further iterate, prototype, test, build, and execute the idea.

The teacups and tea saucers use Makey Makey technology. The teacups and tea saucers have aluminum foil tape and when the teacups are placed on the saucers, the aluminum foil tape pieces connect and complete the Makey Makey circuit, triggering a musical note to play from the computer.

Overall, I am very proud of this puzzle and I loved its creative use of Makey Makey technology! Guests often said it was their favorite part of the entire experience!

In a future iteration of this puzzle, I would like to improve on the technical implementation and theming. The puzzle used standard Makey Makey wires/alligator clips to connect to the aluminum foil tape pieces on the teacups and tea saucers. The wires/clips were not themed and I think covering the wires or theming them would increase the immersion of the puzzle. Also, the teacups and tea saucers were quite small. This was an intentional thematic choice as we wanted guests to experience that feeling of growing/shrinking that Alice experiences in the film. However, it posed a logistical challenge when solving the puzzle as sometimes the clips would get in the way of the small contact area between the teacups and tea saucers. Finally, I think a stronger wiring system than alligator clips, like wires and soldering, would improve the sturdiness of the puzzle and prevent any clips from falling off.

Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering Article

The Carnegie Mellon University College of Engineering published an article about our organization and our escape room!

Contact

508-404-3168  |  leplatt@andrew.cmu.edu  |  Pittsburgh, PA  |  https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenelizabethplatt/