The Nine-Nine, Family Escape Room in Hawthorn
Family • Hawthorn, Melbourne • 60 minutes • 2 to 6 players
The story
Welcome, new recruits, to the most important event of the year: the Heist. Catch bad guys, look good doing it. Crack codes, outsmart rival squads, and retrieve the missing trophies before time runs out. Step into a bright, comedic police precinct and pull off the mission with your squad.
At a glance
Suitable for: All ages. A bright, comedic room with no scares, welcoming for kids and families with a participating adult.
A bright, funny detective caper with no scares, no darkness and nothing intense. Genuinely all-ages, made for families, kids and anyone who wants clever puzzles and laughs rather than a fright.
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 The Nine-Nine at Hawthorn
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?
The Nine-Nine is a comedic police-precinct caper: new recruits, a high-stakes Heist, rival squads, and a race to crack the codes and grab the trophies before the clock runs out. If you loved Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the Nine-Nine precinct, the annual Heist episodes and the squad's daft-but-clever energy, this room was built for you. It is bright, funny and completely un-scary, so it is a favourite for families, kids' parties and groups of friends. Fans of the show will spot plenty to love, and you do not need to know it 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?
The Nine-Nine 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 Hawthorn 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 Hawthorn
The Nine-Nine is our most family-friendly room at Hawthorn, one of the best kids' and family escape rooms in Melbourne and a favourite for birthday parties. On Glenferrie Road, 150 metres from Glenferrie Station, it sits alongside our scarier rooms HackSaw and Strangest Thing, so a mixed group can pick the intensity that suits them. It is an easy choice for a family or detective escape room in Hawthorn, Kew, Camberwell or the eastern suburbs.
Frequently asked questions
- Is The Nine-Nine based on Brooklyn Nine-Nine?
- It is our own original comedic detective story, made for fans of that world. If you loved Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the precinct, the Heist and the squad, you will feel right at home. It is bright and funny rather than scary, and you do not need to know the show to enjoy it.
- Is The Nine-Nine suitable for young kids?
- Yes. The Nine-Nine 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 light-hearted, comedic police-precinct caper, 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 Hawthorn 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 Hawthorn and race head to head.
Getting here & what's nearby
606 Glenferrie Road, Hawthorn VIC 3122. We are on the corner of Glenferrie and Oxley.
150 metres from Glenferrie Station, with Tram 16 stopping at our door (Stop 72). There is free two-hour parking just off Oxley Road.
Get directions → •
Parking nearby → •
Restaurants & bars nearby →
Glenferrie Road cafes and restaurants are right nearby. Questions? Email hawthorn@rushescapegame.com.au or call 03 8590 9729.
More rooms at Hawthorn
Other Rush venues across Melbourne
St Kilda: Alice in Wonderland, The Conjoining, Treasure Island, The Last of Them | Book St Kilda
Chadstone: HackSaw: Remastered, Mission:Possible, Da Vinci Down Under | Book Chadstone
A comic caper rather than a tense one, which is why it gets requested so often by family groups. Everything else we run with no fright rating attached is listed on adventure escape rooms in Melbourne.
What is a detective escape room, and is The Nine-Nine funny?
A detective escape room is the most natural version of the whole format, because detective fiction and escape rooms are the same shape. And yes, this one is a comedy, which is rarer than it should be and much harder to build than a horror room.
You are new recruits at the precinct. There is a high-stakes heist on, rival squads, and a race to crack the codes and grab the trophies before the clock runs out. Bright, fast, three out of five on puzzles, two to six players, all ages, rated Not scary, our lowest tier. Nothing in it will frighten anybody.
It is also the room at Hawthorn we point families and kids parties at, because the other two are an eerie eighties monster hunt and a genuinely terrifying trap horror.
An escape room is a locked room mystery from the inside
Detective fiction invented a sub-genre almost two hundred years ago that describes what you are about to do more precisely than any marketing copy could.
Edgar Allan Poe published The Murders in the Rue Morgue in 1841 and created both the modern detective story and the locked room mystery: a crime committed in a sealed space that nobody could have entered or left. The pleasure of it is entirely mechanical. The reader is given a set of physical facts and a situation that appears impossible, and the solution has to be fair, meaning every piece of evidence was on the page all along.
That fairness rule is the important part, and it is exactly the rule a good escape room lives by. Golden age detective writers took it seriously enough to codify it: no unmentioned secret passages, no clue withheld from the reader, no solution that depends on information nobody had. Break the rule and the reader feels cheated rather than beaten.
An escape room is the same contract from the other side of the door. Everything you need is in the room. Nothing requires knowledge you were not given. If a group loses, it should be because they did not connect two things, not because something was hidden from them. When we say a room is fair, that is the specific promise, and it is the difference between a room people recommend and a room people complain about.
The detective vocabulary carries all of it naturally: the case file, the evidence board, the alibi that does not hold, the motive, the suspect list, the interrogation, the piece of evidence logged and forgotten, the deduction that recontextualises everything before it. All of which are puzzle mechanics wearing a job.
Comedy is the hardest register to build
Every escape room company has a horror room. Very few have a genuinely funny one, and the reason is that fear is much easier to manufacture than laughter.
Fear runs on physiology. Darkness, sudden sound, confinement and a countdown will produce a reaction in almost anyone, regardless of taste, culture or mood. Comedy has no such shortcut. It depends on timing, on shared reference, on the group's own energy, and a joke that lands for one group falls flat for the next.
So a comedy room has to be built differently. It cannot rely on delivering jokes at you, because a room has no comic timing. What it can do is set up situations that are inherently ridiculous and then let the group be funny in them. A rivalry with a squad you never meet. Bureaucratic obstacles standing between you and something absurd. Trophies that matter enormously for no defensible reason. Give six people a serious system and a stupid goal and they will supply the comedy themselves, reliably, every session.
That is why the precinct comedy tradition works so well here. The workplace sitcom set in a place with real rules, real hierarchy and real paperwork, where the stakes are simultaneously enormous and completely trivial, is the perfect frame for a group of friends to be idiots together for an hour with permission.
If you loved Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the Nine-Nine precinct, the annual heist episodes and the squad's daft but clever energy, 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.
The Nine-Nine is Not scary and three out of five on difficulty. It is the only room at Hawthorn with no eerie or frightening content at all, which matters at a venue that also holds HackSaw. If you are booking a birthday at Hawthorn and you are not sure, book this one.
Who this room is for, and who it is not
Book it if: you are booking a kids birthday at Hawthorn, you have a mixed-age group, it is a first escape room, you want to laugh rather than be tense, or you have a work group who would rather compete than be frightened.
Pick something else if: you are experienced players wanting to be beaten, or you want atmosphere and story more than banter.
Age. All ages with an adult in the room, and it works from around seven. It is the youngest-friendly room at Hawthorn.
Kids parties. This is the standard birthday room at this venue. Hawthorn has three rooms, so an older sibling group can play Strangest Thing at the same time, and Glenferrie Road has everywhere you would want for food afterwards.
Work groups. An underrated choice. The rivalry framing gives a team a competitive structure without anybody being frightened or embarrassed, and the comedy register defuses the awkwardness that a mixed work group often brings into a room. If you want something harder for a work booking, Secret Agent Man at South Yarra is four out of five and also has no horror content.
Nothing frightening. No horror content, no dark used to unsettle 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. Bright and 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 comedy room built on documents and case files that took real work, and it is the reason a group with mixed English can play this one together.
Questions people ask before booking
Is it suitable for children?
Yes, with an adult in the room, from around seven. It is our lowest scare tier and the most child-friendly room at Hawthorn.
Is anything scary or dark?
No. No horror content, nothing in the dark, nothing jumps out, no live actors. It is a bright comedy caper.
Which room should we book for a kids birthday at Hawthorn?
This one. For older kids around ten and up who want something eerie and harder, Strangest Thing is the other option at this venue.
Is it actually funny or just billed that way?
The room sets up situations rather than telling jokes, and the group supplies the comedy. In practice that works better and more reliably than scripted humour, because your group is funnier to you than any writer would be.
Do we need to know the show?
No. The room briefs you on everything and nothing requires outside knowledge.
Is it a good first escape room?
One of our best. Three out of five, fair puzzles, no pressure from fear, and a premise everybody understands immediately.
The three rooms at Hawthorn
Deliberately three different registers in one building, so a mixed group can split and everyone gets the hour they came for.
| Room | Scare | Difficulty | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| The Nine-Nine | Not scary | 3 / 5 | Kids parties, first-timers, work groups, anyone who wants to laugh. |
| Strangest Thing | Spooky | 4 / 5 | Older kids and adults who want a challenge with atmosphere. Hardest room here. |
| HackSaw | Terrifying | 3 / 5 | Horror players only. Visceral trap horror, 16 and over. The original. |
For more all-ages options, Cluemanji and Monsterz at South Yarra and Treasure Island at St Kilda are all Not scary at three out of five.
Finding us in Hawthorn
The Nine-Nine is one of three escape rooms at Rush Hawthorn, 606 Glenferrie Road, in the middle of the Glenferrie shopping and dining strip and a short walk from Glenferrie Station. Easy from Kew, Camberwell, Canterbury, Balwyn, Glen Iris, Richmond, Burwood, Box Hill and the inner east, and simple on the train from the CBD.
It is the most convenient venue in the network for a kids party, because everything you need afterwards is on the same street and nobody has to move the car.
Sessions run seven days. Two to six players, sixty minutes, instant confirmation and free rescheduling up to two hours before your start time.