Granite State Escape owner Pamela Provencher with two of her employees in the “Defuse the Bomb” room. Photo by Christine Carignan.
There’s no escaping the popularity of the latest entertainment trend—escape rooms. The immersive, interactive experience locks six to 10 people into a room where they work together to solve a series of puzzles to get out, hopefully within an hour. Escape rooms have been opening nationwide, and NH has gone from having none to three within the past year (with a fourth opening soon).
Granite State Escape and LOK’d!, each in Manchester, and Mystery NH in North Conway are currently open and are about to be joined by Portsmouth Escape Room. The industry popped up in NH by happenstance. Each of the four initially expected to be NH’s first. While you might expect competition to be fierce, the escape room owners have been reaching out to one another for advice, and they say the development of this fledgling industry is an opportunity not a liability.
Pamela Provencher was first out of the gate, opening Granite State Escape last summer after escaping a puzzle room in Pennsylvania. “I thought it was the coolest concept I had seen. I came back to New Hampshire and saw we didn’t have one. I thought it would be a blast,” Provencher says.
She convinced her husband, Andrew, to use the profits from the sale of their home to start Granite State Escape. The investment seems to be paying off, as she is the only one among the four to run the escape room as a full-time business with five employees.
While Provencher thought the rooms would be a hit, business has been brisker than she imagined. “We were completely underestimating the market,” she says, adding that Granite State Escape attracts 350 visitors per week, which includes private and corporate events.
New Hampshire is a relatively late adopter of this trend, which started in Japan in 2007 before sweeping Asia, according to research by Scott Nicholson, a professor of game design and development at Wilfrid Laurier University in Canada.
The Rooms
Across the board, each owner says they were inspired by experiencing or learning about an escape room in another state or country and thought NH was ripe for such an endeavor. But each has a unique approach.
The escape rooms use a blend of puzzles, including riddles, word puzzles, codes to crack, clues to solve and in some cases, mechanical puzzles that cause things to happen in the room to engage guests. Some rooms have monitors to track time and provide additional clues if guests get stumped. Themes have included escaping from jail, from a funeral parlor and an Alice in Wonderland experience.
“In the rooms, something always gets triggered by the guests. It’s fun to see them react,” says Marci Skersey, who founded LOK’d! in Manchester in March with Matt Bertsch, Both still work in the telecom industry.
Guests search for clues at LOK’d! in Manchester. Courtesy Photo.
Granite State Escape started with two rooms, including one where up to 10 guests find themselves trapped in a funeral parlor run by the mob that is under police investigation. They recently retired an escape from jail scenario.
The couple quickly added a third room, Defuse the Bomb, where visitors are agents of the Department of Homeland Security investigating the theft of two chemical bombs from a local Army base. Sealed in a laboratory that is wired to blow, visitors must not only escape but also defuse the bomb.
“It’s been crazy,” Provencher says of the flood of customers and the need to refresh her rooms. “We want to bring new things to customers to get repeat business. We decided to go larger to appeal to team builders, birthday parties and corporate events,” she says.
After using temporary spaces, Mystery NH, co-owned by Keith Force and Beth Scrimger, opened its newest location in the Mountain Valley Mall with two rooms, including one starting in a “mysterious basement” and ending with finding a secret passage. Force, whose day job is database development, says his rooms attract about 40 visitors per week, which he expects to increase once summer tourism hits high gear as tourists make up about 80 percent of his business.
“We’re a new industry, a new attraction. Once you describe it’s a room with puzzles, they start getting it,” Force says. “More people know about escape rooms, but only 10 percent of those who come to us have actually done an escape room. We have people who do one of our rooms and on the way out book the other one for the next day.”
LOK’d! has two rooms and expects to open a third by mid to late summer. Bertsch says the duo invested about $10,000 into the business, which they run when not at their full-time jobs. They are hiring staff to bring the business up to full time and so far are covering costs.
Variety is Key
Mystery NH and Portsmouth Escape Room are in tourist heavy locations, but the Manchester rooms are more reliant on repeat business and need refreshing periodically, say the owners. While LOK’d! only opened less than two months ago, it is already planning to add a third room. “We have to keep it fresh,” says Skersey. The theme had not yet been chosen, but the room may rotate themes throughout the year to match holidays.
Mystery NH was scheduled to reveal a third room at the end of April based on Alice in Wonderland. Force says he has enough space to add a fourth room. “It’s a different activity. You’re not in front of a screen. It’s social,” he says of what is driving demand. “You’re working together with other people. We had one mother pull my partner to the side to say thank you for giving me an hour with my kids away from a screen. It’s something the whole family can enjoy together.”
Guests work on solving a puzzle at Mystery NH, located at the Mountain Valley Mall in North Conway. Courtesy Photo.
Granite State Escape is open during the week to accommodate private and corporate events. “Corporations love it. It’s short and inexpensive and has people working together in a unique environment that is fun,” Provencher says. Using all its rooms, Granite State Escape can accommodate groups of 25 to 30 at one time. LOK’d! has already attracted businesses for private events. Javi Kalback, an IT project manager who is opening Portsmouth Escape Room, decided to initially open on weekends, but her goal is to expand to weekdays to cater to businesses.
“Clearly the market is excited to have something like this,” Provencher says. “I view competition as a good thing. It teaches people what an escape room is and creates a following.”