In short: Questions and answers about Dracula in Northbridge and Van Helsing in Melbourne: the blood moon legend, difficulty, prices, team sizes, age rules, access, safety and live records.
Dracula is a 60-minute gothic horror escape room by Escape This at Escape This Northbridge in Perth. A vampire hunter’s notebook leads your team to the crypt of the Count’s undead Bride, and you must keep the pair apart before the blood moon rises. Its companion room, Van Helsing, plays in Melbourne CBD.
They share one gothic world. In Dracula you follow Van Helsing’s notebook into the Count’s crypt in Perth; in Van Helsing, in Melbourne, the hunter’s farewell letter admits Dracula survived him and hands his war to you. They are separate rooms with their own sets and puzzles, so you can play either on its own.
That is what everyone believed. In the Dracula escape room an excavation opens his tomb and finds it empty, and Van Helsing’s notebook, found in its place, suggests the staking was a supernatural trick. Transylvania’s lore-keepers say the Count has been hiding in the shadows ever since.
She is the undead companion the Count has searched for across the centuries. In the Dracula escape room she lies imprisoned in a crypt in the graveyard of the Monastery of Brașov, and the blood moon ritual that would raise her needs a sacrifice: you.
The blood moon is the clock. When it rises, Dracula’s strength comes back and the ritual to wake his Bride can be finished. Your hour in the Dracula crypt runs out as the moon climbs; stop the reunion before then or become part of it.
Van Helsing opens with the hunter’s last letter: he has failed, and Dracula still lives. Among misty headstones in Melbourne CBD, you take up his sacred artefacts, break into the catacombs and try to free the souls Dracula judged unworthy of eternal life, before you end up beside them.
Escape This rates Dracula 7 out of 10 and describes it as a challenging room for experienced escapers. The puzzles take deep thinking and careful reading of the hunter’s notes, so a group with a few rooms behind it has the best chance.
On paper, slightly. Escape This rates Van Helsing 7.5 out of 10 against Dracula’s 7, with intermediate-level puzzles. Brand-new escapers are best mixed with someone who has played before; for a team of complete beginners, Escape This points to Pirates or Magic University in Melbourne first.
It is a horror room, so yes, a little. Dracula’s crypt is lit by lanterns, with darkness, flashing light, smoke and the possibility of jump scares. Nobody is forced to stay: a panic button opens the way out. Van Helsing keeps its jump scares mild.
They can, but Dracula is best with at least one experienced escaper in the team. Escape This pitches both Dracula and Van Helsing at people who like a challenge. If nobody in your group has played before, a gentler room at the same venue makes a good warm-up.
Sixty minutes in Dracula’s graveyard. Arrive 15 minutes beforehand and leave 15 minutes after to catch your breath and debrief, so the whole visit takes about 90 minutes. Teams that beat the Count finish a little sooner. Van Helsing also runs for an hour.
Dracula costs $49 per player Monday to Thursday and $59 per player Friday to Sunday at Escape This Northbridge. Everyone pays the same because everyone is 15 or over, and those prices exclude public and school holidays.
Van Helsing is $59–$65 per adult and $45–$55 per young adventurer aged 13 to 15, depending on whether you pick a peak or off-peak session. The Melbourne booking calendar shows each session’s price before you pay. Dracula in Perth has separate prices.
Open the booking page, decide between the Count’s crypt in Northbridge (Dracula) and the hunter’s catacombs in Melbourne CBD (Van Helsing), then tap a free time; the calendar locks it in on the spot. You can also phone Northbridge on (08) 6118 0286 or Melbourne on (03) 7078 8118.
Never. Every Dracula and Van Helsing booking belongs to your group alone, a policy Escape This has always kept. If you would rather face the Count with people you have never met, you’ll need a different operator.
Dracula takes ten at most and Van Helsing eight, and Escape This won’t stretch those limits. Split the group and book a second room to start at the same time; Escape This Northbridge runs eight other rooms. For work events and very large groups, Escape This’s team-building hub can plan several rooms at once.
Yes. Escape This gift vouchers, sold on escapethis.com.au, can be spent on Dracula in Northbridge or Van Helsing in Melbourne, which makes a night in the crypt an easy present for the horror fan who already owns every edition of the novel.
Four to ten. Dracula’s minimum is four because some puzzles need several people working at once, and ten is a firm ceiling. Van Helsing in Melbourne is different: two to eight players, with at least four on Friday and Saturday evening peak sessions.
Dracula is strictly 15 and over, and Escape This may check ID. No younger children may play or watch, even alongside a parent. Van Helsing in Melbourne admits players from 13.
Yes, from 13. Van Helsing is a strict 13-plus room, the same hunt Dracula’s fans know but open to younger teenagers, who pay the young adventurer price until they turn 16. Anyone under 13 cannot play or watch, and ID may be checked.
Not everyone. Dracula and Van Helsing need a moderate level of English reading, and the narration and clues are spoken in English, so the team leans on whoever reads most comfortably. Escape This suggests most of the group be fluent for the best night.
No. Neither Dracula in Northbridge nor Van Helsing in Melbourne can take a wheelchair. Escape This runs accessible rooms at other venues and its team will help you choose one if you call.
Yes. Dracula’s graveyard uses theatrical smoke, and so do Van Helsing’s catacombs, so players with asthma or other breathing conditions should check with the venue before booking.
Dracula has no crawling and no tight spaces to squeeze through, although Escape This’s general warning mentions possible confined spaces and jump scares, so call if you’re worried. Van Helsing states plainly that it has no confined spaces.
Yes. Nothing in Dracula or Van Helsing involves crawling or tight squeezes, and Escape This lists both as suitable for pregnant players and people with mobility difficulties. Smoke and jump scares are the things to weigh up.
Yes, with help from the team. Dracula’s story and clues come through audio, so teammates pass them on, and the puzzles themselves call on all sorts of skills. The same goes for Van Helsing.
Press the panic button. A gamesmaster watching Dracula on CCTV opens up straight away, and the rest of the team can carry on hunting. Van Helsing has the same buttons.
Fifteen minutes before your Dracula session. That leaves time for lockers, the briefing and nerves, so none of the hour before the blood moon rises is lost.
Please do. Dracula and Van Helsing are both set in the not-too-distant past, so come as the Count, as a vampire hunter or in Victorian evening black. Closed shoes are required, and comfortable clothes help.
No. Phones, smartwatches and cameras go into free lockers before you enter Dracula’s crypt, and anyone who has been drinking or taking drugs won’t be allowed to play.
Dracula plays only at Escape This Northbridge, 48 Lake Street, Northbridge WA 6003, upstairs in the venue’s Hall of Horrors. Van Helsing, its Melbourne counterpart, is at Escape This Melbourne CBD, 259 Collins Street.
Not Dracula itself. Melbourne has Van Helsing, which opened at Escape This Melbourne CBD in October 2026 and carries the hunter’s side of the Dracula story. Dracula stays in Northbridge, Perth.
No. Dracula plays only in Northbridge, Perth, and Van Helsing only in Melbourne CBD. Escape This hasn’t announced either room for Sydney.
Dracula shares Escape This Northbridge with The Haunting, Cannibal, Buried Alive, The Possession, Asylum, Zombie Apocalypse and Frankenstein Resurrection, so a horror double is easy to arrange. The Haunting, a haunted house, is upstairs in the same Hall of Horrors.
43% of the 1,285 teams who have entered Dracula’s crypt in Northbridge got out before the blood moon rose. That puts Dracula firmly in hard-room territory.
A few do. Dracula has the 5th lowest escape rate of the 9 escape rooms at Escape This Northbridge with at least 100 recorded games (43%). "Hardest" here means fewest successful escapes.
The quickest escape across Dracula and Van Helsing is 31:00, set in Dracula by a team of 5 at Escape This Northbridge with 3 clues and 29:00 to spare.
57% of the 7 recorded Van Helsing games in Melbourne have ended in an escape, with winners taking 57:59 on average. Dracula’s Perth figures are counted separately.
Winning Dracula teams lean on 5 hints per game and walk out after 54:19, on average. Ask the gamesmaster for help as often as the notebook defeats you.
Escape. Dracula’s leaderboard ranks successful teams by time, with fewer clues breaking ties, and the board refreshes from Escape This’s game records. Van Helsing’s results are ranked on the same page under Melbourne.
Players rate Dracula 4.95 out of 5, and 173 of them gave the Count five stars. They single out the graveyard built indoors, the atmosphere and a challenge that sends plenty of teams home beaten. Van Helsing’s first reviews will join them as Melbourne hunters post theirs.
From players, through Escape This’s ER-OS system, which collects reviews that name Dracula; staff approve the five-star texts shown here, and the average counts every review, published or not. Reviews of other Escape This rooms never appear on the Dracula pages.
Escape This designed and built Dracula and Van Helsing itself. Escape This is Australia’s largest escape room operator, with its own escape room design studio and escape room factory.
Two rival comic diaries on this site. Count Dracula writes from his crypt in the Dracula room at Escape This Northbridge, Perth, and Professor Van Helsing from his catacombs in the Van Helsing room at Escape This Melbourne CBD. They cover the same story from opposite sides, answer each other and sit beside the real room facts.
No. Both diaries are fiction written by Escape This for fun. The Count and the Professor are the Dracula and Van Helsing escape rooms’ versions of characters from Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, and the Count’s bat, Reginald, exists only in the diary. The facts beside each entry, such as ages, team sizes and addresses, are real.
No. Neither diarist writes down a puzzle or a solution. The entries describe the Dracula and Van Helsing stories, sets and house rules in character, so they are safe to read before you play either room, and each one links to the real answers about booking, ages and safety.
Only the two openings. Dracula opened at Escape This Northbridge on 28 October 2020 and Van Helsing at Escape This Melbourne CBD on 16 October 2026, according to Escape This’s booking records, and the diarists’ opening entries carry those dates. Every other date is picked for the story.
The Count’s Diary belongs to Dracula in Northbridge, Perth, and Van Helsing’s Diary to Van Helsing in Melbourne CBD. The archive lists both by date, labels every entry with its diarist and can show one diarist at a time; where both write about the same events, each entry links to the other’s side.
About once a month between them. Each new entry appears on its own date, written in the Dracula or Van Helsing voice beside the room facts it touches, so the archive grows through the year.
Book Dracula in Northbridge or take up Van Helsing’s relics in Melbourne. One hour, lantern light and a dead hunter’s notes.
