Hotel Mystery by El Duco’s Magic

An interesting looking prop from the late Swedish manufacturer El Duco. This is clean in premise and simple to do. It comes with two routines one like a bank night effect and the other involving the vanish and reappearance of a ring.

You received a wooden board with a metal door knob and a metal slotted box attached. This is supposed to represent a hotel room door. Five plastic hotel keys-the kind that look like credit cards-are shown. The spectator chooses four and leaves you with one. She slips all four of her cards into the slotted box and nothing happens. You slip yours in and a green LED lights up, indicating the door is unlocked and can now be opened.

The light is small and the wood and metal prop are not very realistic, so this becomes more of a clever new twist to show your magician friends rather than a professional prop for lay audiences.

The product and its effect would have been quite topical in the late 90s, but today’s audiences may not see it that way. Cheap popular LED lighting has become so ubiquitous in today’s world, that showing a specially made device which lights up at a convenient time may not seem very magical to most audiences.

Effect: 1:
Display the “hotel door”. Tell the audience that you travel frequently and that your pockets are full of key cards from different hotels. In saying that you take out a bunch of key cards with names of famous hotels from your pocket. “Let’s play a game. I know, of course, what hotel I am staying at right now – but you don’t. I have put a large sum of money in the safe in my room and the one of you who chooses the correct key card and opens the door to my hotel room will win that money”, you explain. Four spectators assist. They take one card each. Free choice. One card is left for you. If they want they can change their mind and take your card if they prefer. Hand over the hotel door the the spectators and ask them to try their cards in the lock, one by one. If the green LED light goes on and the door opens the money is theirs.

When everybody has tried their cards without being able to open the hotel door it is finally your turn. You take back the hotel door and place it on the table over the case as described before. Now you try your card which has been left for you by the spectators. The green light goes on and the door opens! From the safe (inside the lock) you take out a hundred dollar bill – and put it in your wallet!

Effect: 2:
Borrow any finger ring from a lady in the audience, the ring disappears (use your own method) but you assure the owner that her ring is safe in your hotel room. “I know you will get it back if the ring really means anything to you”, you promise and start the “key card-lottery” as described above. Only this time the lady who owns the ring is always the winner. When she opens the door with her key card as the final contestant she finds her ring in “the safe” on the stem of a red rose!

Text Source: click for details

Found something wrong? Help us improve things by clicking here!