Escape rooms have become one of the more popular family entertainment center (FEC) attractions in the last few years. Escape room participants love the heart-pounding thrill and immersive experience that escape rooms provide. In this blog, we will break down what an escape room is, why they are great attraction options, especially for multi-location facilities, and how we can help you attract new audiences and boost revenue with our Infinite Escapes.

Recent Popularity of Escape Rooms

An escape room is a game where a group of people must work together to solve puzzles and accomplish tasks in order to “escape” the themed room in time. Escape rooms have exploded in popularity over the last few years.

The boom began in the early 2010s. Before that, escape rooms were generally rare, stand-alone facilities that only offered one or two themed experiences. Even as recently as 2014, there were only a handful of escape rooms around the US. Today, there are almost 2,500 escape room facilities in the US. They have become increasingly popular attractions as technology has made them more immersive while lowering labor costs and footprint size for business owners.

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Escape Rooms in FECs

There are several reasons escape rooms are a perfect fit for FECs. Both escape rooms and entertainment centers attract people of all ages and demographics. Escape rooms are a great experience for families, friends, coworkers, or teaming up with new people to work together.

Additionally, as escape rooms have increased in popularity, there has become a wide variety of storylines and difficulty levels. The various themes helps appeal to a wide variety of guests looking for different experiences.

Earlier this year, we installed two autonomous escape rooms for Crave Golf Club in Pigeon Forge, TN. Crave’s VP of Marketing, Josh Mayberry echoed this idea when talking about the escape rooms. “We wanted to have 2 very different types of rooms so they would attract different people.”

“We wanted to have 2 very different types of rooms so they would attract different people.”

Furthermore, with the abundance of attractions available to FEC owners these days, floor space is at a premium and operators must decide how to best maximize their throughput and revenue. Today’s escape rooms often have small square footage requirements, meaning operators can boost revenue by adding a couple escape room experiences without trading off too much of the valuable space in their facilities.

Why Escape Rooms Are Great For Multi-Location Venues

There are added benefits for businesses that have multiple locations. As the family entertainment industry has exploded, many owners/operators have opened second, third or more locations.

When you install different escape room themes at different locations, you have the option to rotate themes between venues over time. This is especially useful if your locations are more spread out. It will give guests the opportunity to try out different themes and experiences and encourages repeat plays of your escape rooms.

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How We Can Help

For years, we have been helping clients around the world attract new audiences and boost revenues through escape rooms. We build and install two unique types of escape rooms that offer very different experiences for your guests.

Traditional – Our traditional rooms are about 60-minute experiences that take up only about 350-500 square feet. They can be multiple rooms. They require more hands-on attention from staff, but allow you to charge a higher price per player.
Autonomous – We’ve pioneered autonomous escape rooms. These self-guided, auto-resetting rooms only require about 150-250 square feet and are shorter, 30-minute experiences: in half the square footage requirement, you can double your revenue.

The autonomous escape rooms have become a top attraction at Crave. “If you have an FEC and want something that has a small footprint, but can create great revenue, I would recommend these 30 min escape room experiences.”

We want to help you bring fully-themed immersive escape rooms to your facility. Request a quote below to get started.