7 TIPS TO GUARANTEE A QUALITY ESCAPE ROOM EXPERIENCE
I’m an owner of one of the fastest growing escape room companies in the UK, called Exciting Escapes. We started just over 2 years ago and now have 16 escape rooms across 3 towns. We’ve hosted over 50,000 players and have had over 3,000 of our customers give us feedback on Google, Facebook and TripAd
My 7 tips to guarantee a great escape room experience are below;
1. CHOOSE THE RIGHT VENUE!
The very first step of guaranteeing a quality escape room experience is to do your homework. One of the many wonderful things about Escape Rooms is that people often like to talk about the experience online afterwards. It is one of the reasons that we always offer our customers a photo dressed up as spies. It is a lovely thing to share with friends and family and a great way to remember the experience.
So take the time to check out the escape room company. Look at their Google reviews, go to their Facebook page and certainly look them up on TripAdvisor! There are more and more escape room companies opening all the time, so there should be a bit of choice for you not far from your home. Look at the recency and frequency of the reviews and choose the one that is right for you!
2. CHOOSE THE RIGHT ROOM!
So after you have chosen the right venue, the next step is to choose the right room. The Escape Room world is full of stories for you to immerse yourself in, so choose one you and your team might like. If you like thrillers, choose a spy game or murder investigation, but if you aren’t a fan of wizards and witches probably best not to spend time shut in a room with them!
All of our rooms at Exciting Escapes, for example, follow a similar theme. British Intelligence needs your help and you need to undertake a critical mission (that takes exactly 60 minutes!). Our rooms, however are themed by decade, so for example we have a 1970s police station, a 1950s cold war flat, a 1960s cinema and even a 2050s spaceship! So choose a theme that you will enjoy!
3. CHOOSE THE RIGHT TEAM!
I am sure that you are like me and have some friends that you think would absolutely love to do an escape room with. You probably also have some friends who, when you think about spending time in a room with them, it brings you out in a cold sweat!
My main tip for team selection is choose people who you can have fun with! Ideally they will be great communicators as well and have a set of complimentary skills to your own, but the main thing is pick a team you will have fun with!
4. ARRIVE ON TIME!
The games always have a defined start time, with other games taking place afterwards. When this happens we do all we can to accommodate the team, but often on a busy day the next team need to use the room straight afterwards, so games sometimes get shortened. Turning up on time ensures that you will get the best quality experience and not feel rushed and flustered.
Please also follow the instructions from the escape room company carefully. Often you are asked to arrive at the venue 10-15 minutes before the game start time. This is to ease you into the experience and make time for hanging up coats, locking away bags and phones and using the loo (best to get it out of the way first!). At Exciting Escapes we also use this time to show an introductory video that starts immersing our customers into the story and the role that they are about to play in it. It also covers off important health and safety messages.
5. LISTEN CAREFULLY TO THE MISSION OBJECTIVE
Every escape room has a different objective. Some of them are simply to get out of the room. Some of ours for example require you to uncover a specific object. Or to intercept a top secret package. Or to recover some stolen documents or to stop a bomb from going off!
Please take time to listen to your briefing carefully. I remember watching a game that had 2 brothers playing a mission. They had actually completed their objective in a great time, but then one of the brothers wasn’t sure and wanted to recap on everything that they had done in the room. They spent ages doing this and almost ran out of time!
6. THINK OUT LOUD!
We have hosted over 13,000 teams at Exciting Escapes and the ones that tend to the the best are the ones that communicate well together. To coin Roy Walker from catchphrase “say what you see!”.
It may be that one of your team is working on something on one side of the room and someone else is looking at something on the other side of the room. Maybe those things are connected and maybe if both players were talking about what they were doing they would have a better chance of joining the dots and completing the puzzle.
Great communication in the room often leads to a great quality escape room experience.
7. SUSPEND YOUR DISBELIEF!
When I think about the teams that arguably have the very best experience I think they are often the ones who really get “into to”. We get so many great reviews where the customer says “the hour just flew by” or “we were so engaged”.
Escape room owners often strive for full “immersion”. But what does this mean? We want all of our customers to go on a journey with us. We want them to forget their jobs, their phones, their screens and fully engage with what they are faced with. I still remember the first time that I walked through the first door of my first escape room. It was so utterly exhilarating. There was no instruction manual – you had to talk and move and think with your team mates as the clock ticked down and the excitement grew….
I hope its the same for you!
Written by Peter Gale – Director