In short: Answers about Pirates, Escape This’s pirate-ship escape room: Calico Jack and the saga, difficulty, prices in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne, crew sizes, ages, access and records.
Pirates is a 60-minute adventure escape room by Escape This. You’re prisoners below deck on Calico Jack’s galleon, and his crew is asleep. You have to break free, find his treasure and escape in a lifeboat before dawn, when you’d walk the plank. It plays in Perth CBD, Sydney CBD and Melbourne CBD, and drops anchor in Brisbane CBD in the first half of 2027.
Yes. Pirates opens Escape This’s Calico Jack saga, and Pirate Island follows it, with Jack’s island hideout. Each room stands on its own, but the Escape This team suggests starting aboard his ship in Pirates.
There was: Dead Man’s Chest, the trilogy’s finale, about Calico Jack’s cursed chest and Davy Jones. It ran only at Escape This Perth CBD during 2024 and has since been retired, so Pirates and Pirate Island are the two chapters you can still play.
Calico Jack, the quickest and most feared pirate in the Caribbean and, in his own opinion, the best dressed. Pirates borrows the nickname of John Rackham, a real pirate of the early 1700s; everything else about this captain, from his vanity to his habit of losing prisoners, is Escape This’s invention.
The captain’s first mate, and the fiercest-looking sailor aboard. Don’t let the scar fool you: in Pirates, Scarface is quietly on the prisoners’ side, and Calico Jack hasn’t worked it out. He’s back in Pirate Island, the sequel, still covering his tracks.
Daybreak is when Calico Jack’s crew wakes up and your absence is noticed. Pirates gives you the hours of fog and darkness to slip away. If you’re still aboard at first light, the story ends with you walking the plank.
His treasure. It’s stashed somewhere aboard the galleon while the pirates sleep, and Pirates is won by finding it and getting off the ship with it before daylight.
It was a real pirate rule: a crew shared the plunder from a raid, and if they took nothing, nobody was paid. It’s the Pirates tagline because the whole room is a raid. Leave Calico Jack’s ship empty-handed and you’ve got nothing to show for it.
It’s one of the best. Pirates is rated 6 out of 10: the clues are mostly in plain sight and the work is connecting them. First-time crews and switched-on kids do well, and it’s the most escapable room at Escape This Sydney CBD and Melbourne CBD.
Pirates is played across more than one chamber of the ship, starting below deck and moving into the captain’s quarters. The door between the chambers is what makes the Perth CBD version unsuitable for wheelchairs.
No. Pirates is a swashbuckling adventure, not a fright night. It’s dark below deck and the lighting shifts, but kids aged nine and up love it, and younger ones can play with a parent.
Sixty minutes from the moment you’re locked in the hold. Arrive 15 minutes early for the briefing and allow another 15 afterwards, so a Pirates visit runs about 90 minutes.
Perth CBD: $49 adult and $39 child Monday–Thursday, $59 and $49 Friday–Sunday. Sydney CBD: $55 and $45 Monday–Thursday, $65 and $55 Friday–Sunday. Children are under 16, and those prices exclude public and school holidays. Melbourne CBD uses peak and off-peak pricing: $59–$65 per adult and $45–$55 per young adventurer.
Pick Perth, Sydney or Melbourne on the booking page, choose a session and you’re confirmed straight away. You can also phone Perth on (08) 6118 0286, Sydney on (02) 9173 8535 or Melbourne on (03) 7078 8118.
Yes, on every day except Saturday, when crews need at least four. In Perth or Sydney, a pair can still phone the venue on a Saturday or walk in and take a free slot if there is one. The room works well for two.
Yes, in Perth CBD or Melbourne CBD, where both run: escape the galleon, then follow Calico Jack to his island. Pirate Island also opens at Sydney CBD in November 2026, so Sydney crews will soon be able to play both.
Pirates holds eight at most. Split the group and book a second room at the same start time. Pirate Island in Perth, Melbourne or, from November 2026, Sydney makes a natural pairing, since both halves of the crew end up fighting Calico Jack.
Yes. Escape This gift vouchers cover Pirates at every venue and are sold on escapethis.com.au, which makes them an easy present for a pirate-mad birthday.
No. Pirates bookings are always private. Your crew has the galleon to itself.
Two to eight players at all three venues, with a minimum of four on Saturdays (in Melbourne, Friday and Saturday evening peak sessions). The cap of eight doesn’t bend.
Nine and up is recommended, and seven- and eight-year-olds can come along as paying players with their family. Children aged nine or under need a paying adult in the game with them.
No, one reader is enough. Pirates needs moderate English reading, and the story and hints are spoken in English, so the crew can rely on whoever reads most comfortably.
In Sydney and Melbourne, yes, with one wheelchair per session (in Melbourne, check the size of the chair with the team). In Perth CBD, the narrow door into the second chamber rules it out, so Escape This suggests a different Perth CBD room.
Yes. There’s no crawling and no squeezing through tight spaces anywhere on the ship, so it’s a comfortable choice.
No. Despite the below-deck setting, Pirates has no confined spaces, and Escape This lists it as a good choice for claustrophobic players.
Only in the story. Pirates doesn’t use smoke or haze machines, so it’s fine for players with asthma or breathing conditions.
Well, with the crew’s help. Narration and hints in Pirates are audio, so teammates relay them, while the puzzles themselves are hands-on.
Each chamber of Pirates has a panic button, and the gamesmaster watching on CCTV opens up straight away. Everyone else can keep going.
Fifteen minutes before your start time. That covers lockers and the briefing, so no time comes off your hour below deck.
Definitely. Hook, Sinbad, Blackbeard and Jack Sparrow all suit the ship, and bonus points go to crews that stay in pirate voice the whole hour. Closed shoes, please.
Phones, smartwatches, cameras and anything else that records stay in the free lockers. And nobody plays Pirates after a session at the bar.
At three Escape This venues: Perth CBD (The Basement, 712–720 Hay Street Mall), Sydney CBD (630 George Street) and Melbourne CBD (259 Collins Street). A fourth Pirates port, Escape This Brisbane CBD, is set to open in the first half of 2027.
It’s Escape This Sydney CBD’s most escapable room: 87% of crews get away with the treasure. It’s a favourite with families and first-timers, and the most reviewed version of Pirates.
Because of one doorway. The first chamber of the Perth CBD ship is wheelchair friendly, but the door through to the second chamber is too narrow for a chair. Escape This suggests another Perth CBD room, or Pirates in Sydney or Melbourne, where wheelchairs are welcome.
Melbourne CBD prices each Pirates session as peak or off-peak, so adults pay $59–$65 and young adventurers $45–$55 depending on the time you choose. The booking calendar shows each session’s price before you pay.
81% of the 4,752 crews who’ve played Pirates got away. By venue: Perth CBD 71%, Sydney CBD 87%, Melbourne CBD 99%.
24:46, by a team of 6 at Escape This Perth CBD, with 2 hints and 35:14 left before dawn.
Close to it. By escape rate, Pirates is the 3rd most escapable of 12 at Escape This Perth CBD; the most escapable of 9 rooms at Escape This Sydney CBD; the most escapable of 5 rooms at Escape This Melbourne CBD. That’s why it’s the room Escape This suggests for first-timers.
Crews that escape Pirates ask for 5.9 hints on average and need 52:05 of the hour.
Pirates averages 4.98 out of 5 across Perth, Sydney and Melbourne, with 344 five-star reviews to date. Reviewers mention the full-size ship built indoors, the sound effects and voice-overs, and puzzles that suit a mixed crew.
Escape This built Pirates’ galleon set in-house at its Perth workshop, the same team that went on to make Pirate Island. Escape This is Australia’s largest escape room operator, with its own escape room design studio and escape room factory.
A comic, made-up diary that Escape This writes in the voice of Calico Jack, the pompous captain of the Pirates galleon. He records the crews he takes prisoner, the many who escape and his hunt for whoever keeps helping them. It suits every age and gives nothing away about the puzzles.
No. John Rackham, the pirate nicknamed Calico Jack, sailed the Caribbean around 1720 and left no such journal. The log is fiction Escape This writes for the Pirates site, and Duchess, the captain’s parrot, exists only in its pages. The room facts printed beside each entry are real.
No. The captain never writes down where his treasure is, how his locks open or the way off his ship, so the log reveals nothing a crew needs. Read it before your voyage or after it; either way the hold will still surprise you.
The openings and the move. Escape This’s booking records show Pirates opening at Escape This Perth CBD on 26 January 2024, Sydney CBD on 18 October 2024 and Melbourne CBD on 10 August 2026, its Northbridge run ending in November 2024, and Pirate Island arriving at Perth CBD on 29 March 2024. The log’s entries for those days carry those dates; the rest are dated for the story.
The first mate does, in secret. Scarface writes up many of the same days from the other side: the prisoners he helps, the tracks he covers and the captain who never suspects him. His journal lives on the site of Pirate Island, the sequel to Pirates, and doesn’t repeat a word of the captain’s log.
Yes, about once a month. Each new entry appears here on the date written at the top, so the log keeps pace with the real Pirates ships in Perth, Sydney and Melbourne, and Brisbane when it opens.
Book Pirates in Perth, Sydney or Melbourne. Two to eight of you, one ship, one hour of darkness.
