Escape a haunted madhouse at Deleta starting this weekend
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POCATELLO – A local roller skating rink is starting up its unique take on a haunted house for its second year this weekend.
Friday is the opening night of Deleta Skating and Family Fun Center’s “Escape the Madhouse,” a haunted house located on the second floor of the building at 520 Yellowstone Ave. But this haunted house isn’t a typical one – it’s also a series of 13 escape rooms.
“Like every escape room place has creepy escape rooms because people love it,” said Kristina Parrish, escape room manager. “They love the scare. So we figured, why not combine them for a Halloween haunted house event?”
Before the upstairs were ever used as escape rooms, they were a laser tag arena. When Josh and Sloan Dalley bought Deleta in 2022, they decided it was time to use the space for something else, and luckily, they already had experience running a small mobile escape room.
“So they were already familiar with escape rooms, and all the laser tag stuff was really, really old up here,” Parrish said. “And this building is extremely old. … It is roughly 85 years old, and all the running around from the laser tag was damaging the floors, so the best idea was to take it out, make it escape rooms, to preserve the building itself.”
Deleta operates four escape rooms, with a fifth in the works, expected to open at the end of the year. For Escape the Madhouse, they have 13 rooms.
While each of these escape rooms are “vastly different from each other,” they’re all tied together by a storyline. To explain the plot, Parrish said, “You are trying to find cure vials to cure this mysterious virus that has overtaken Idaho. The residents of the mad house have already become infected, and they’ve gone insane, each one in their own way.”
Groups of four people will have two minutes in each room to find a cure vial, collecting as many as they can as they progress through the madhouse. Prizes ranging from a dollar off at the snack bar to a free monthly skating pass are available to participants, depending on how many vials their group finds.
Escape the Madhouse will officially open on Friday at 7:15 p.m., charging $15 for admission, and its final night will be a blackout night on November 1. Kids ages 6 and up will be allowed entry, and anyone can receive a “no-scare necklace,” but the experience is targeted at ages 12 and over, Parrish said.
“The people who get the most enjoyment are, I would say, between 17 and mid 30s, just from responses and feedback I’ve gotten from guests. But we do have all ages come in,” Parrish said.
For those not looking for a fright, Deleta will operate its regular escape rooms throughout the month of October as well.
Below is a calendar for when Escape the Madhouse will be open and when the regular escape rooms are open.
