Photo by Tyler Nelson
The team behind Sixty to Escape. Stevie Calabrese, Stephen Kristof, Nick Timber and Ashley Timber.
A new escape room opens in the Milwaukee area at Southridge Mall today. Sixty to Escape Wisconsin is a team effort between the original Sixty to Escape in Gurnee, Illinois and City 13 in Oak Creek.
When I think of escape rooms, corporate team-building outing comes to mind. When I think of shopping malls, my stomach turns. I know I’m not alone in this and when the assignment came to my desk, I told my boss I wasn’t interested.
The thought of pairing up with even familiar strangers to solve puzzles has never appealed to me. When I got to Southridge Mall to meet the team behind the new operation, I shared my skepticism with them.
Photo by Tyler Nelson
The goal of their first room is to participate in a heist at an underwater casino. We struck gold!
“It’s easy to spot the faces of the people who were dragged against their will,” says Nick Timber, co-owner of the new Sixty to Escape. Those are exactly the people Timber and partner Stephen Kristof are trying to win over.
Timber is the owner of City 13 escape room in Oak Creek, which happens to be the reigning 2019 Best of Milwaukee winner for area escape rooms. Kristof is the owner of Sixty to Escape in Gurnee, Illinois. After experiencing Timber’s escape room in Oak Creek, the two became friends and decided they could put their heads together and expand both of their businesses.
Timber’s background is in the biomedical field where he used to fix all sorts of hospital equipment. That electrical and technical expertise is evident once you step inside the escape room. Kristof’s background is in themed attraction and family entertainment. He’s built and worked on everything from museum exhibits to film sets and haunted houses.
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Stevie Calabrese is responsible for a lot of the set design. She was a contestant on the Syfy channel’s reality show for special effects artists, Face Off. Calabrese and Kristof have been dating for around nine years. Nick Timber’s wife, Ashley, is also involved with the group. The four of them now all work full time between the three locations, Sixty to Escape in Gurnee, City 13 in Oak Creek and now Sixty to Escape at Southridge Mall.
With four separate rooms inside of the Southridge Mall location, the only one active for the public now is the Casino, where guests participate in a heist at an underwater casino. The plan is to have another themed room open every 45 days or so until all four are fully functioning. It’s not the easiest task when it’s just the four of them working on design and construction of the unique escape rooms.
Photo by Tyler Nelson
Maybe it was the low expectations I had going into my first escape room experience, but my mind was totally changed on the concept when it was all done. It’s hard not to appreciate the effort that goes along with the team trying to create a way for people to escape, kids to forget about their phones and become actively involved in accomplishing a goal through communication and teamwork.
