The Only Fire Safety Escape Room in America

The Fire Museum of Memphis is one of the most hands-on museums in the country. It is a place where kids can slide down a brass pole, don real turnout gear, drive a fire engine simulator, and feel the heat of a house fire simulation. Education through experience is the museum’s founding philosophy, and it has worked for decades.

But tucked into the building was a basic arcade space that had never lived up to the museum’s standard. The museum knew the room had potential, but the experience it housed wasn’t delivering on the museum’s core mission: teaching visitors the fire safety skills that could genuinely save their lives.

Former Executive Director Kimberly Crafton had a clear vision for what it could become: “This escape room tests all your fire safety knowledge so that in case of a fire, you can survive.” The challenge was building an experience that could deliver on that promise for visitors of every age while making the learning stick through play rather than instruction.

QuantumERA transformed the space into a fully immersive, multiplayer escape room built around four sequential fire safety puzzles, powered by nine touchscreens and anchored by physical room elements visitors have to interact with in real space.

Each puzzle reinforces a specific fire safety concept introduced earlier in the museum to create a capstone experience that rewards visitors who paid attention and gently corrects those who didn’t.

Heat Check

Players must test door surfaces for heat before opening, learning to identify hazardous exits before proceeding to the next challenge

Escape Route

Teams work together to plan a path through a smoke-filled house, mapping a safe exit under pressure

Get Low and Go

A riddle leads players to a hidden button that can only be found by applying the safety principle: get low and move below the smoke

Emergency Call

The experience concludes with a 9-1-1 walkthrough, giving visitors hands-on practice responding to a real crisis

Outside the escape room, a central leaderboard displays team scores in real time adding a competitive layer that drives replay visits, boosts engagement, and makes the safety lessons land harder through the motivation to improve. Three puzzle difficulty levels ensure the experience is genuinely accessible to every visitor who walks through the door.

9 Touchscreens

Interactive puzzle stations built into the physical room environment

4 Sequential Safety Puzzles

Heat Check, Escape Route, Get Low and Go, Call 9-1-1. Each tied to a specific fire safety concept

Physical Room Elements

Hidden clues, real objects, and spatial challenges that require visitors to move through the room

Emergency Call Walkthrough

Concludes the experience with 9-1-1 practice for real-world readiness

Live Leaderboard

Displays team scores outside the room, driving competition and repeat engagement

“This is the only permanent publicly available fire safety and prevention-themed escape room in the country.”

— Kimberly Crafton, Executive Director, Fire Museum of Memphis

What was once a forgettable arcade space is now an experience new visitors plan their trip around. More importantly, it delivers on the museum’s founding mission: giving visitors fire safety knowledge they’ll actually remember, embedded in an engaging experience.