Treasure Island, Pirate Escape Room in St Kilda
Pirate • St Kilda, Melbourne • 60 minutes • 2 to 6 players
The story
Stowed away on a pirate ship, you hear the mutiny of the captain. You find yourselves aboard a cursed ghost ship, and now you and your friends must uncover the location of the cursed treasure chest and return what was stolen, or suffer the same fate as the rest of the crew.
At a glance
Suitable for: All ages. A fun pirate treasure hunt with no scares, great for families and kids. Under-16s welcome with a participating adult.
A swashbuckling pirate treasure hunt. The cursed ghost ship is all adventure, with no gore, no scares and nothing that chases you. Genuinely all-ages, and a favourite for kids, families and first-timers.
Pricing: $74 per person for 2 players, scaling down to $70 per person for 6. Children aged 9 to 13 are $42 each, with at least one paying adult per room.
Book Treasure Island at St Kilda
Not ready to lock in the whole group?
Hold your preferred time with a single-player booking ($100 a room), which secures the room while you round up your team. Everyone else pays the difference when you arrive. Booking is instant, and you can reschedule for free up to 2 hours before your start time.
Is this theme right for you?
Treasure Island is a swashbuckling pirate adventure: stowed away on a pirate ship, you overhear the mutiny, find yourselves aboard a cursed ghost ship, and have to find the cursed treasure and return what was stolen before you share the crew's fate. If you loved Pirates of the Caribbean, the Black Pearl and its cursed crew, ghost ships and Davy Jones' Locker, or the classic treasure hunt of Treasure Island, this room was built for you. It leans fun and adventurous rather than scary, with no gore and nothing that chases you, so it is genuinely all-ages and a favourite for families. Fans of pirate tales will love the setting, and you do not need to know any of them to have a great time.
Why book with Rush
- Melbourne owned and operated. More than a decade building Melbourne's highest-rated escape rooms, every room designed, built and run in-house.
- A 4.9 star experience. Rated by thousands of players across our venues.
- Bespoke, never off the shelf. Every room is designed and built by our own team, not bought as a kit.
- Handmade and authentic. We work with local artists and restore vintage set pieces, so every room feels real and fully immersive.
- Always being upgraded. Our in-house team is constantly refining the tech, puzzles and sets, so the rooms stay cutting edge.
- Our delight guarantee. If your experience falls short, tell us and we will make it right.
Planning a birthday or corporate event?
Treasure Island is one of our most popular rooms for kids' birthdays and family days out. Each room holds up to 6, so larger groups split across rooms at St Kilda and play at the same time. For corporate team-building and group functions, see our team-building page or email enquiries@rushescapegame.com.au. For birthdays, parties, and hens or bucks nights, see our celebrations page. To hold a date, book a single player as a deposit.
Good to know before you go
- No experience or special equipment needed, just your group.
- Wear comfortable clothing and closed-in shoes.
- Arrive 10 minutes before your start time.
- Players under 16 are welcome with a participating adult in the room.
- You are never locked in and can step out at any time.
Escape rooms in St Kilda
Treasure Island is one of our most family-friendly rooms and one of four escape rooms at our St Kilda venue on Barkly Street, moments from Luna Park, Acland Street and the St Kilda foreshore. It is one of the best kids' and family escape rooms in bayside Melbourne and a favourite for birthday parties. Alongside it at St Kilda are the family-friendly Alice in Wonderland, and our scarier rooms The Conjoining and The Last of Them, so a group can pick their level. Easy to reach from Elwood, Elsternwick, Balaclava and the bayside suburbs.
Frequently asked questions
- Is Treasure Island based on Pirates of the Caribbean?
- It is our own original pirate treasure hunt, made for fans of that world. If you loved Pirates of the Caribbean, the Black Pearl and its cursed crew, or the classic Treasure Island, you will feel right at home. It is a fun, all-ages adventure with no scares, and you do not need to know any of them to enjoy it.
- Is Treasure Island suitable for young kids?
- Yes. It is an all-ages, family-friendly room with no horror or scares. Younger children are welcome with a participating adult, and the puzzles are designed so the whole family can join in.
- Will it scare my kids?
- No. There are no live actors, no scares and nothing that chases or grabs you. It is a swashbuckling pirate treasure hunt aboard a cursed ship, built to be fun rather than frightening.
- Is it still fun for the adults?
- Definitely. The puzzles have enough depth to keep grown-ups engaged, so it works just as well for a team or a group of friends as it does for families.
- Is it good for a birthday party?
- Yes, it is one of our most popular choices for birthdays. Each room holds up to 6, so larger groups split across rooms at St Kilda and play at the same time. To hold a date, book a single player as a deposit, and see our celebrations page or email enquiries@rushescapegame.com.au for party or group pricing.
- How hard is it, will we finish?
- It sits at a moderate difficulty and is very achievable. Your games master gives hints whenever you need them, so most families and groups make it out with time to spare.
- How many players do we need?
- Two to six. Larger groups split across rooms at St Kilda and race head to head.
Getting here & what's nearby
Level 1, 100 Barkly Street, St Kilda VIC 3182.
Trams 3, 3a and 67 stop 350 metres away (Stop 34), and Tram 16 passes Luna Park 350 metres away (Stop 33).
Get directions → •
Parking nearby → •
Restaurants & bars nearby →
Barkly Street, Acland Street and the St Kilda foreshore are all close by for food and drinks. Questions? Email stkilda@rushescapegame.com.au or call 03 9972 6286.
More rooms at St Kilda
Other Rush venues across Melbourne
Hawthorn: HackSaw, Strangest Thing, The Nine-Nine | Book Hawthorn
Chadstone: HackSaw: Remastered, Mission:Possible, Da Vinci Down Under | Book Chadstone
The treasure map with a cross on it, the buried chest and the black spot were invented by Robert Louis Stevenson in the early 1880s rather than drawn from history. Real crews had no reason to bury anything. How that fiction turned out to be perfect escape room material is on pirate escape rooms in Melbourne, and this room is one of our six with no fright rating.
What is a pirate escape room, and is a ghost ship scary?
Not in the slightest, and the ghost ship is the part people ask about most. Treasure Island is rated Not scary, our lowest tier, which means no horror content, no darkness used to unsettle anyone and nothing that jumps out. A cursed crew in this room is an adventure problem, not a horror one.
A pirate escape room is close to the ideal setting for the form, and the reason is physical. A ship is already a machine full of compartments. Sea chests, lockers, charts, knots, a wheel, a compass, a hold, a captain's cabin with a lock on it. Nothing has to be invented or justified. Every object a pirate story contains is a thing that opens, closes, points somewhere or means something, and that is the entire raw material of an escape room.
You have stowed away, overheard the mutiny, and found yourselves aboard a cursed ship. Find the treasure, return what was stolen and get off before you share the crew's fate. Three out of five on puzzles, two to six players, all ages, and one of the two rooms at St Kilda we point families at.
Almost everything you picture when you think "pirate" was invented by one novel
This is genuinely true and it is the best fact in the genre. Robert Louis Stevenson published Treasure Island in 1883, and most of what the world now considers standard pirate iconography did not exist in any consistent form before it.
The treasure map with an X marking the spot is his. Stevenson drew the map first and wrote the book to explain it. The idea of buried treasure as a pirate's defining habit is essentially his invention: real pirates overwhelmingly spent their takings immediately, in port, on the things sailors spend money on, and the handful of documented burials were short-term caches rather than a tradition. The one-legged sailor with a parrot on his shoulder is Long John Silver. The black spot, handed to a man to tell him his crew have voted against him, is entirely fictional and now feels like maritime law. Even "yo-ho-ho" is Stevenson.
What he was doing, and why it matters to a room designer, is building a symbol system. In Treasure Island, objects carry information. The map is a document to be interpreted. The chest holds the map. The black spot is a message with rules attached. Silver's account of himself changes depending on who is listening, so the reader has to work out what is true from evidence rather than being told. That is a puzzle book with sea shanties in it, and it is why the setting translates so cleanly into a room.
The book is also public domain, which is why we can use the name properly rather than gesturing at it.
What the room draws on
The working ship
The first strand is the practical world of sail, and it is a gift. Charts and dividers, a compass rose, a sextant, latitude and longitude, rigging and knots, the ship's bell, a manifest, a logbook kept in a hand that gets shakier as the voyage goes on. Then the pirate specifics: the Jolly Roger and its skull and crossbones, the articles every crew signed, the quartermaster who represented the men against the captain, the letter of marque that made a privateer legal and a pirate not, doubloons and pieces of eight, being marooned on a spit of sand with a single pistol.
Real pirate ships were unusually democratic, which almost nobody knows. Captains were elected and could be voted out, injuries were compensated at agreed rates, and the loot was divided by a written formula. A pirate crew ran on rules, records and shares, and a world that runs on rules and records is a world full of documents to be found and decoded.
The ghost ship
The second strand is the sea's own folklore, and it is eerie rather than frightening. The Flying Dutchman, condemned to sail forever and never make port. Davy Jones's locker as the sailors' name for the bottom of the sea. St Elmo's fire glowing at the mastheads, which is a real electrical phenomenon and looked like judgement to anybody who saw it. The Mary Celeste, found in 1872 in perfect order, sails set, food aboard, and not a soul on her, which has never been explained and remains the most unsettling true story in maritime history.
Cursed treasure belongs here too: gold that will not let you go, a debt that has to be repaid, a crew who cannot rest until something taken is returned. That is a wonderfully clean escape room premise, because the win condition is built into the folklore. You are not fighting anything. You are settling an account.
The adventure
The third strand is the one that keeps it bright: the stowaway, the mutiny overheard from inside a barrel, the island, the map, the race and the escape. If you loved Pirates of the Caribbean, the Black Pearl and its cursed crew, ghost ships and Davy Jones, or Stevenson's original, this room was built for you. It is our own original story, not an adaptation of anything.
How we rate scare, and why it is not difficulty
Two independent scales, because they measure different things and confusing them is how families end up in the wrong room. Difficulty is the puzzles, one to five stars. Scare is the experience, four named tiers.
Treasure Island is Not scary and three out of five on difficulty. It is the room at St Kilda with the least frightening content of any kind, which matters at a venue that also holds The Conjoining, our demonic horror. A cursed ghost ship sounds like it should sit higher on the scare scale. It does not, and we would rather be plain about that than have a parent guess.
Who this room is for, and who it is not
Book it if: you are booking a kids birthday, you have a mixed-age family group, it is somebody's first escape room, or you want a warm adventure hour with no fear in it at all.
Pick something else if: you are experienced players wanting to be beaten, or you specifically want atmosphere and tension.
Age. All ages with an adult in the room. It works from around six or seven, and it is the youngest-friendly room at St Kilda.
Mixed groups at St Kilda. This is the venue's real advantage. Four rooms in one building spanning every tier, so the horror fans can book The Conjoining while the kids play this one at the same time, and everybody meets in the lounge afterwards with completely different stories.
Nothing frightening. No horror content, no dark used to scare anyone, nothing jumps out, and no live actors in this or any of our sixteen rooms, at any venue, in any season including Halloween.
Claustrophobia. You are never locked in and the exit is always available. The room is not built around confinement.
Language. The puzzles are deliberately designed not to depend on English fluency. Almost everything is solved through symbols, patterns, objects, numbers and physical logic rather than reading and wordplay, across all sixteen rooms. In a room built on maps, charts and navigation that works out rather neatly.
Questions people ask before booking
Is the ghost ship scary for children?
No. It is rated Not scary, our lowest tier. The curse is an adventure problem to solve, not a threat. No horror content, nothing in the dark, nothing that jumps out.
What age does it suit?
All ages with an adult in the room, and it works well from around six or seven. It is the most child-friendly room at St Kilda.
Is it a good first escape room?
One of our best. Three out of five is enough to feel like a real achievement without grinding, and the pirate setting explains itself in the first ten seconds.
Are there live actors?
No. Not here and not in any of our sixteen rooms, at any venue, in any season.
We have a mixed group, some want horror. Can we all come?
Yes, and St Kilda is the venue for it. Book this alongside The Conjoining or The Last of Them in the same time slot and play simultaneously.
Do we need to know the book or the films?
No. The room briefs you on everything and nothing requires outside knowledge.
Our adventure rooms, no horror content
If you are avoiding anything frightening entirely, these are the rooms across the network with nothing scary in them at all, easiest first.
| Room | Venue | Players | Difficulty | What it is |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Treasure Island | St Kilda | 2 to 6 | 3 / 5 | Pirate adventure and a cursed ship. The family pick at the bayside venue. |
| Cluemanji | South Yarra | 2 to 6 | 3 / 5 | Board-game jungle adventure. Bright and warm. |
| Monsterz | South Yarra | 2 to 6 | 3 / 5 | A friendly monster world. The youngest-friendly room we run. |
| The Nine-Nine | Hawthorn | 2 to 6 | 3 / 5 | Comedy detective caper. |
| Game of the Dragon | South Yarra | 2 to 6 | 4 / 5 | High fantasy. Hard, and still all ages. |
| Secret Agent Man | South Yarra | 2 to 6 | 4 / 5 | Espionage thriller. The strongest work-group room. |
| Da Vinci Down Under | Chadstone | 2 to 4 | 5 / 5 | Renaissance code-cracking. Equal hardest room we run. |
| Mission:Possible | Chadstone | 2 to 4 | 5 / 5 | Vault infiltration. Equal hardest room we run. |
Finding us in St Kilda
Treasure Island is one of four escape rooms at Rush St Kilda, Level 1, 100 Barkly Street, a few minutes from Luna Park, the Esplanade and the foreshore. Easy from Elwood, Elsternwick, Balaclava, Windsor, Prahran, Brighton, Caulfield and the bayside suburbs, and simple on the tram from the CBD.
A pirate hour and then the actual sea five minutes away is a better afternoon than it sounds, and with Luna Park around the corner this is the venue we would build a kids birthday around.
Sessions run seven days. Two to six players, sixty minutes, instant confirmation and free rescheduling up to two hours before your start time.