Interview with ESCAPETHEROOMers!
Today, we’re lucky enough to have Cici and Brandon of ESCAPETHEROOMers here for an interview! For those of you who don’t know, Cici and Brandon run an awesome escape room review site called ESCAPETHEROOMers, where you can find all the best escape rooms near you. They also host a YouTube channel where they show off escape rooms all across the globe, as well as provide video interviews with many professionals in the escape room industry (including yours truly!). They’re as fun and bright as they appear on camera and they’ve contributed a lot to the escape room industry in a relatively short period of time. I’ve done enough talking so let’s ask some questions!
Can you tell us a little bit more about yourselves?
Cici and Brandon when they played (and handily defeated) our Supervillains room!
(Cici:) Born in China, I came to the US at the age of 10. After graduating from Columbia University with an Economic degree, I’ve tried many different career paths and ended up falling in love with Real Estate. I love the interaction with people and helping them find their dream home. Brandon is a 4th generation born “New Yorker”. He started his company “HIP HOP DANCE JUNKIES” and “ANCHORED talent group” a few years ago. He also enjoys seeing his clients improve on their dance skills and having his talent artists become discovered. This is why we created “UpKey Consulting LLC” together. It gives us an opportunity to collaborate and use our resources to help people with different needs to organize personal and corporate events.
How did the two of you meet?
This is going to be very cliché but we met at my friend’s wedding. I was the maid of honor and he was one of the groomsman.
What were you up to before you found your passion for escape rooms?
We love to travel. Before escape rooms, we’d traveled to about 60 different countries in the world. Because of escape rooms we are revisiting some of the locations and on our trips now, we mainly do escape rooms. One time we went to Hawaii and didn’t even set foot on a beach. For 4 days straight we were indoors traveling from one escape room location to the other.
What got you into escape rooms - how did this journey begin for you?
My sister brought us to an escape room in CT (they have since changed ownership) and told us that we have to pay to be locked up for 60 minutes and have to solve puzzles to escape. The idea sounded very boring and unattractive at the time. We didn’t escape the first time, and when we got home, we booked another location right away and escaped the second time. The rest was history…
Was there a moment when things turned from “this is a fun hobby” to “we’re going all-in on making ESCAPETHEROOMers a reality”?
We had a group of friends who was kind of on an “escape room hype” when we first started. They would ask us what rooms should they try, how was the set design for this room, and if we enjoyed their puzzles. Sometimes we had to repeat the information to different groups so we thought it would probably be easier if we just started a blog. This way we can also help other players who might be looking for suggestions and know what to expect ahead of time. We also wanted to help the escape room industry by telling more people about how fun the experience is and why they should try them out. While we travel and even during business meetings, we always bring up escape room topics and they always get intrigued but don’t know what they are. We wanted more people to love escape rooms in general and that is why and how “ESCAPETHEROOMers” was born.
Your videos are awesome - can you talk about your process?
We don’t consider ourselves to be the smartest people but definitely quick learners and lucky to have creative mindsets. We did a lot of research into vlogging, equipment, videography and film editing. Brandon taught himself how to use Premiere Pro and Final Cut Pro. If you compare some of our earlier videos to the recent ones, you’ll see a huge difference. We try to always see it from the viewer’s perspective and take in their comments. We know that people’s attention spans are much shorter these days, therefore we created another option to introduce the escape room locations and games to our readers who prefer videos over text. This also helps readers to see the physical location, parking options, and sneak peeks of the rooms (if they are “scary” or not) to make their booking decisions easier.
We were beyond honored to receive one of your Bullseye awards. Can you talk about your award process?
2019 is the first year we gave out Bullseye Awards since we only started playing escape rooms at the end of 2018. We played 350 games at 221 different companies in 16 different countries (12 US states) by the end of 2019, so that’s quite a lot of games and traveling within about a year. But it also made it very difficult for us to give out awards as there were so many incredible companies and games out there. We have a category called “Best Overall” which included company’s games that had an overall strength in storyline, set design, immersive experience, and puzzle designs. We also gave out awards to companies whom we felt the game had a category that stood out. For example, your “Supervillians” game had a unique storyline that has stuck in our minds ever since we’ve played it.
What is the most memorable thing you’ve experienced in your travels?
We were in Ljubljana, Slovenia and got a tourist map when we got off the bus. We couldn’t believe how many escape rooms were in the walking vicinity. Ljubljana is such a clean and beautiful city by the way. But discovering escape rooms was like adding a cherry on top. We only had 4 hours to explore since we had to get back onto our cruise ship. Soo we found the nearest one and booked one on the spot. It was awesome and afterwards we even had time to get a yummy cake at one of the cafés nearby!
Do you have any crazy escape room stories?
There was one time we played with a group of teenagers and we were pretty sure that they were under some kind of “influence”. The guy was holding on to one of the clues that was found and refused to share it. There was another guy who pretty much stood at the same spot for the entire game. I don’t even know how we got out of that room.
What do you think the future holds for escape rooms?
This is such a hard question given the current situation right now. We hope that things could somehow return to the way it was before because from what we’ve seen so far, a bunch of locations have closed their doors. We also see an emergence of remote escape games and online digital games, but from an enthusiast’s perspective, I would rather go to a physical location and do the real escape room versus online. It’s the best option right now but I don’t know if it’ll last when the world becomes normal again. If the escape room location can survive this period of economic crisis, I do believe people will still consider this entertainment option (although I do feel that the customers will become very aware of the sanitary situations at the locations due to COVID).
Shifting gears, you’ve done a lot for the escape room industry. Can you talk a little bit about the community building you’ve done, between the regional facebook enthusiast page and other content during this pandemic?
We created an FB group for the “East Coast Escape Room Enthusiasts” since we searched and discovered that there were two groups for the West Coast. So we had to quickly represent ourselves. We allow escape room owners to interact with members in there by posting any new rooms they have, promotions and such. Members can also post to find players to join them to play games with or share their experiences. We also recently wrote an article on online games you can play at home. This article incorporated all the different times of games out there now and terminology used as we found that players are confused as to what’s the difference between a live escape room, remote escape room, digital escape room, etc… Also, it lists out the company, game(s) offered, prices, and language. We’ve also written an article on remote escape rooms introducing it from a player’s perspective on how these type of games are played and operated and some suggestions to the companies on improvements that can be made. In addition, we are constantly giving shout outs on our social media for games we’ve tried and loved to help the escape room industry during these difficult times.
On a more somber note, your coronavirus blog was a rollercoaster of emotions, and you have our deepest condolences for your losses. Do you have any thoughts you’d like to share as you’ve both recovered?
No one should ever have to go through this. It was close to a near-death experience for the both of us. We felt very lucky to be here today and to still be able to enjoy what we have and love. Through this experience, we felt even closer to our family, friends, and our escape room community. We learned not to take anything for granted and to cherish every moment of our lives. Even though we’re going through a difficult time right now economically, we are still seeing so much love in the escape room community (whether it be free games that locations are creating, discounts they are giving for when they re-open, or donations they are giving to other superheroes in the COVID fight). We were able to fight off the “monster” through love, support, and strength and we know the escape room community will do the same!
To wrap things up, is there anything else you’d like us to know about your dream team? Also, do you have anything exciting in the works that we should keep an eye out for?
We do have full time jobs and this is definitely not what we expect to earn a living off of. We would love to expand and gain teammates in the future. We are constantly trying to come up with new concepts to benefit the community. Currently we are working on a new project but can’t reveal the details yet. The best thing to do is check on our social media and website for updates!