MagicGizmo

A rain-soaked crowd of approximately 50,000 gathered near the Clearwater, FL hotel to watch Criss Angel's latest stunt. Angel was shackled to a sixth story balcony and seemed to struggle to pick the final lock on the roof door. His escape route was supposed to be to the roof and into a hovering helicopter, but it left without him as the seconds ticked to 30 on the 4 minute countdown timer.

The timer ran out and the screen went to static for a moment before the implosion of the Spyglass hotel. Angel later emerged from the rubble of the hotel looking dazed and confused. "I had a contingency, I'm not a fool," said Angel in a post implosion interview, "I'm very methodical in what I do."

While the younger Angel fans expressed concern for their hero, the sentiment was quite different on the magician's boards where such escape theatrics are well known dating back to Houdini and the many others that followed him.

A local FOX broadcast ran a report of some of their theories of how the escape was pulled-off. See the report here.

Related Story: Criss Angel Plans Escape from Imploding Building