Things to Do in Melbourne Today

Booking something for today, at 4pm, from your phone

Most things worth doing in Melbourne want notice. Tickets went on sale in March, the table needed a deposit, the tour left at nine. An escape room is one of the few plans that survives a decision made in the afternoon for the same evening.

There is nothing to hire, nothing to order ahead and no allocated seating that sold out weeks ago. You need a group, closed-in shoes and a slot that is still open. That is the whole list. It is also why so much of our booking happens on the day: people do not plan us, they choose us when the afternoon opens up or the original plan falls over.

This page is about the part that actually decides your evening, which is what is still free right now and how to get into it.

The times above are live inventory, not an enquiry

The grid on each venue page is the real diary. It is not a form that sends us a request and waits for someone to write back. If a time is showing, it is open, and pressing through takes it.

Two things follow from that, and both matter more on the day than they do a fortnight out.

Times disappear while you are looking at them. A slot is held the moment somebody else starts paying for it. On a quiet Tuesday you will never notice. At six on a Friday, a room you were deciding about can go while you are deciding. If that happens, reload the page and take the next one rather than assuming the venue is full.

What you see is current, not cached. A room that shows nothing at all today has genuinely gone, and no amount of refreshing changes it. That is the point at which to widen the search rather than keep trying the same room.

What is usually still open, by the day you are reading this

Same-day availability follows a shape. It is not a promise, because a school group or a corporate booking can take a venue out at any time, but it is reliable enough to aim at.

One more pattern worth knowing: if a room is gone at a time you want, the other rooms at that same venue are often still free at that same time. Sixteen rooms across four venues means the network almost always has something, even when one specific room does not.

When your first choice is taken, widen before you give up

People tend to check one venue, see a full column and close the tab. The four venues are close enough to each other that the second one you try is usually a workable drive.

• South Yarra has six rooms, so at any given time it has the highest chance of holding something. It is at 160 Toorak Road with entry on the Osborne Street side at 147 Osborne Street, two minutes from South Yarra Station, trams on Toorak Road and Chapel Street. Paid street parking, or the Como Centre car park two minutes away.
• Hawthorn is the fastest to get to without planning. Tram 16 stops at the door at Stop 72, Glenferrie Station is a 150-metre walk, and the street parking on Glenferrie Road and the side streets is free, which no other venue can say.
• St Kilda has four rooms on the first floor at 100 Barkly Street, minutes from Luna Park and the foreshore. Trams 3, 3a and 67 stop 350 metres away at Stop 34.
• Chadstone is at 53 Warrigal Road in Oakleigh with parking on site, which is the thing that matters when you are leaving in twenty minutes and driving from the south east. Warrigal Road is long and has more than one number 53, so map to our entrance specifically.

If you are coming out of the city, South Yarra is the closest of the four and the usual trip is a tram or a five-minute train from Flinders Street.

Tonight, and what happens after

An evening session is the one most people are actually searching for when they land here, and it is the one that turns into a night rather than an hour. Every venue sits on something worth walking to afterwards, which is the difference between a booking and a plan.

Chapel Street runs off the doorstep in South Yarra. Glenferrie Road in Hawthorn is a full dining strip that starts at the entrance, which is why that venue takes so many groups who have not decided where they are eating. In St Kilda you have Acland Street and Fitzroy Street both a short walk. Chadstone puts you minutes from the shopping centre with its cinema and food.

If there are four to six of you and it is a weekday evening, Crew Night applies from four in the afternoon, Monday to Friday, with the code CREWNIGHT at checkout. It is a flat rate for the room rather than a per-head price, so it gets better the more of you turn up.

What today costs depends entirely on what day today is

There is no last-minute price. What you pay is set by the day of the week, not by how close to the session you booked.

The full ladder for every group size sits on the prices and deals page.

Worth knowing if today is flexible: booking ahead is cheaper than booking now. Early Bird takes 15 per cent off with the code earlybird when you book seven or more days out. Nobody who books at four in the afternoon for six is getting that, which is the honest trade you are making for the convenience.

Getting a bigger group in on no notice

Each room takes two to six players. Beyond six you split across rooms at the same venue and race each other, which is the better version of the night anyway.

On the day, that is a question of how many rooms one venue has free at one time. South Yarra with six rooms and St Kilda with four are the realistic candidates for a group of ten or more turning up at short notice. Hawthorn and Chadstone run three rooms each, so same-day they suit one or two rooms rather than a takeover.

If you want a whole venue or a specific set of rooms held together, that is a phone call or an email to enquiries@rushescapegame.com.au rather than a same-day booking, because we build the schedule around the group.

Questions people ask on the day

Check live times at South Yarra See the scare scale