Skill challenge/puzzle trap

[the_david]

How would you make a flooding room trap? I found an example, but it's just a poorly written zap trap. If they can disable it after it goes off (not sure, it doesn't say.) they'd still have to succeed in 1 skill check to get past it. Disarming a trap takes 2d4 rounds and the room takes 10 rounds to flood. If nobody was smart enough to put ranks in disable device they all die.
Either way, the whole thing would be pretty boring and the other players would have to twiddle their thumbs while the rogue does their thing.

To be more specific about this situation: The trap is the airlock of a colossal apparatus of Kwalish. The walls have a hardness of 10 and 30 hp. There are 2 iron doors that automatically lock after a number of people enter. Normally, either a strength check or a disable device check would be enough to escape from such a room, but that wouldn't be entertaining. The DC to break down an iron door is 28. (That might be a bit too high though.) The DC to open a lock is 20-40.

So how do you make this situation more exciting?

[PoeticallyPsyco]

Maybe give them a control panel that they have to figure out how to work in order to cycle the airlock before drowning? Give them a diagram of the panel IRL with all the buttons and switches, and an IRL time limit until the water level reaches the ceiling and they start having to hold their breath. There are instructions... but they're unintuitive diagrams or in a different language (you could borrow from Ettins and make it technical jargon that gets easier to understand the more relevant languages you speak).

The players have to figure out what switch/button does what and activate/deactivate them in the correct order. They can figure it out manually without trying to decipher the instructions, but doing so speeds up the flow of water (for some reason). Perhaps include an incorrect series of actions that will eject them from the airlock and permanently lock it down, forcing them to track down some mining equipment to smash their way in or an override card or something, just to have an additional (less lethal) failure state that they could even activate intentionally if they're out of time.