Things to Do in Melbourne This Weekend
Need a plan for the weekend? An escape room is 60 minutes of teamwork and problem-solving that suits couples, mates, families and work crews alike, rain or shine. With four venues across Melbourne, there is one near you, and you can check live weekend times below.
★★★★★ 4.9 on Google from 2,700+ reviews across our four Melbourne venues.
A weekend plan that suits any group
The best thing about an escape room is how flexible it is: two people or six, kids or a bucks' night, first-timers or veterans. You pick a room to match the group, spend an hour cracking it together, then head out for food nearby. It is active without being exhausting, and it works whatever Melbourne's weather is doing.
Weekends are our busiest window, so booking ahead for Saturday and Sunday is smart. Bigger groups split across rooms at one venue and race each other.
Popular picks for a weekend
A few crowd-pleasers, whatever your group:
- The Nine-Nine (Hawthorn) — a comedic Brooklyn detective heist, all-ages and a favourite for younger kids
- Secret Agent Man (South Yarra) — playful and clever if horror is not your thing
- The Last of Them (St Kilda) — survive the infected, an intense post-apocalyptic escape for teens and up
- HackSaw (Hawthorn) — the original viral horror room (16+)
- Da Vinci Down Under (Chadstone) — crack da Vinci's lost inventions, one of our two hardest rooms
Make a day of it
Each venue sits in a lively pocket of Melbourne, so pair the room with a meal, a market or the beach. Our suburb guides suggest a full day around each venue.
Best escape rooms in Melbourne → Date ideas in Melbourne →Book at any of our four venues
We have 16 rooms across four Melbourne venues, so there is usually one close to you. South Yarra is our six-room flagship; Hawthorn is home to the original HackSaw; St Kilda has our most advanced sets and effects; and Chadstone (Oakleigh) holds our two hardest puzzle rooms. Pick your nearest and check live times.
Frequently asked questions
- Can we book for this weekend?
- Yes, check live availability for Saturday and Sunday on any venue's booking page and book on the spot. Weekends fill fast, so earlier is better.
- What if it rains?
- Escape rooms are fully indoors, so weather never matters, they are a reliable wet-weather plan.
- Good for a mixed group?
- Very. Pick a room to suit the group, or split a big crew across rooms and compete.
- How long does it take?
- Each room runs 60 minutes; allow about 90 minutes on site with the briefing and a photo.
Find your weekend plan
Browse by group or occasion.
The weekend is the one you have to organise
A weekend plan has two hard parts and neither of them is the activity. The first is getting a date that six adults will all agree to. The second is that the good slots on the busiest two evenings of our week are taken by people who sorted it out before you did.
Everything below is aimed at those two problems: what tends to go first so you know where the pressure sits, how to run a group booking without three days of messages, and how to build a Saturday or Sunday around the game rather than squeezing the game into a Saturday.
What tends to go first
Demand across a weekend is not flat, and it does not drain evenly. It concentrates, which is useful, because it means the slot you probably want and the slot that is probably free are rarely the same one.
Saturday evening
The sharpest point of the weekBirthdays, hens and bucks groups, work crews and anybody who has decided to make a night of it are all aiming at the same window. This is where booking early stops being advice and starts being the difference between playing and not playing.
Friday evening
The after-work crowdA different group, mostly teams and friend groups coming straight from the week. It fills fast but it turns over less predictably than Saturday, so it is worth checking even late.
Sunday, middle of the day
Families and recovery plansThe early and middle part of Sunday goes before the ends of it do, and it tightens a long way out during Victorian school holidays and on long weekends.
Saturday morning and the late sessions
Where the room actually isConsistently the easiest part of the weekend to get into, at any venue, usually with a real choice of rooms rather than one leftover. If your group is flexible on time, this is where flexibility pays.
Two things move the whole pattern. Long weekends behave like an extra Saturday rather than an extra Sunday. And rooms that people ask for by name, the ones they have heard about, go before rooms of equal quality that they have not, which is worth knowing if you have a specific one in mind.
Running a group booking without losing a week to it
The usual failure is not that we were full. It is that a group spent five days deciding, and by the time everyone agreed, the slot they were discussing had gone to a group that took ninety seconds.
Book the slot, then tell people. The scarce thing is the time, not the humans. Pick a session that works for the two or three people who have to be there, take it, and let the rest arrange themselves around a fixed point. A group with a booked time organises itself. A group with a poll does not.
Pick the room to the group, not the group to the room. Mixed appetite is the normal case, and there is no need for everyone to agree on how frightening the night should be. Every room is rated on our scare scale, so you can settle that argument in about a minute rather than in the car park.
Beyond six, split and race. Rooms take two to six players. A larger group books adjacent rooms at the same venue, starts together and compares times afterwards, which is a better night than one crowded room. Two teams of five beats one team of ten every time.
How big a group each venue can take at once
If you are organising for a crowd, this is the number that decides the venue before anything else does.
- South Yarra, six rooms, up to 36 players across the venue. The only site that comfortably absorbs a large birthday or a full team.
- St Kilda, four rooms, up to 24 players, with the widest spread from gentle to genuinely frightening in one building.
- Hawthorn, three rooms, up to 18 players, and the easiest of the four to reach without organising lifts.
- Chadstone, three rooms, up to 14 players, with parking on site so nobody arrives late and annoyed.
Those are venue ceilings, not what is free on a given Saturday. For a group at or near the ceiling, or if you want rooms held together as a block, email enquiries@rushescapegame.com.au and we will build the schedule around you instead of you working around the grid. That is also the route for anything with catering, a cake or a room to sit in afterwards.
What a weekend booking costs
Saturday, Sunday and public holidays. $74 a player for a pair, easing to $70 a player at six. The per-head price falls as the group grows, so the fifth and sixth person are the cheapest seats in the room.
Friday evening is not weekend pricing. Crew Night runs Monday to Friday, 4pm till late for groups of four to six, with the code CREWNIGHT. It is priced by the room, from $250 to $300, so a Friday night out lands well under the Saturday equivalent for the same group.
Add $42 for every child aged 9 to 13 in the group.
The weekend is the one page on this site where the lead-time discount is genuinely relevant. Get in 7 days out or more and Early Bird knocks 15 per cent off at checkout, code earlybird. If you are planning a Saturday, you were going to book early anyway to get the slot, so you may as well be paid for it.
Every group size and every day is laid out on the prices and deals page.
Building the day around the room
An hour in a room is the anchor, not the whole outing. Each venue sits somewhere you would want to be for the rest of the afternoon or evening, and on a weekend that is most of the value.
South Yarra
Six rooms at 160 Toorak Road. The door you want is around the corner at 147 Osborne Street, not the Toorak Road frontage. The Royal Botanic Gardens are a short walk, Chapel Street handles everything afterwards, and the sports precinct is close enough to be either a bonus or a parking warning depending on the fixture. South Yarra Station is two minutes away.
Hawthorn
Three rooms at 606 Glenferrie Road, in the middle of the dining strip rather than near it. Stop 72 on the 16 tram is directly outside and the walk up from Glenferrie Station is 150 metres, so a group can arrive from four directions without anyone driving. Street parking here costs nothing, which is why this venue takes so many parties.
St Kilda
Four rooms upstairs at 100 Barkly Street. Luna Park, Acland Street and the beach are all within a few minutes on foot. A late morning or early afternoon session leaves the whole rest of the day free, which makes this the strongest Sunday venue we have.
Chadstone
Three rooms at 53 Warrigal Road in Oakleigh, minutes from Chadstone Shopping Centre with its cinema and food, and parking on site. There is more than one number 53 along Warrigal Road, so send the group our exact map pin rather than the street address.
Questions from people organising a weekend
How far ahead should we book for Saturday night?
Further than you think, and the live grid on each venue page is the honest answer for your particular weekend. If Saturday evening is showing a full column, try Friday evening or Saturday morning before you try a different date.
There are twelve of us. Can we all play?
Yes, as two or three teams in separate rooms at the same venue, starting together. South Yarra and St Kilda are the easiest sites for that. For twelve or more, email us rather than booking room by room.
Half the group hates horror and half of them want it.
Split the group across two rooms at different scare levels and start at the same time. The scare scale tells you exactly which rooms sit where, and nobody has to compromise.
Someone has dropped out. Does that change anything?
The per-player price is set by how many actually play, and it rises slightly as the group gets smaller, because the room cost spreads across fewer people. Let the venue know so we are expecting the right number.
Is the weekend better than a weeknight?
It is busier, not better. The rooms are identical, and a weeknight is cheaper and easier to get into. The weekend wins when the point is getting everybody in the same place at once, which is usually the actual constraint.