Escape, Immerse, Explore New Orleans collected 42 people from 17 states, who traveled 72,000 miles, to ride 2 buses and played a total of 63 games across southeastern Louisiana.
The player satisfaction surveys showed an overwhelmingly positive response. The attendees loved the games and one another.
Randy of Escape Rumors published an incredible writeup/ review of the tour.
Player Variety
We had players on the tour who had crossed the 400-game threshold. We also had a number of folks who had previously visited fewer than 10 escape rooms and literally doubled their play-count on the trip.
We’ve always tried to help players find the escape rooms that fit their taste, skill, play style, and comfort level. After running two escape room tours, we are confident that we’re onto something.
The escape room player community is growing and it isn’t monolithic. This diverse group of people really are attracted to different things in escape rooms.
Mighty Games
We featured a wide variety of games ranging from the more traditional escape rooms of Clue Carré, to the immersive world of Escape My Room, to the beautifully executed games of Rise, to the dumbfounding set design of 13th Gate.
Each company offered something different. Each also offered at least one game that topped someone’s list as their very favorite game of the tour.
The Tour featured 13th Gate’s Cutthroat Cavern, a game that many would consider a curve-breaker. In a lot of ways, it was. Nearly half of the players reported it as their favorite game of the tour. That sentiment, however, was not universal.
This is no knock against 13th Gate. It’s a testament to how much room there is to create unique experiences that can be loved by different people for different reasons.
Of the 14 escape rooms featured on the tour, each of these 6 topped at least one player’s list:
- Agent 13, 13th Gate Escape
- French Quarter House of Curiosities, Clue Carré
- Hijacked, Rise
- Inventor’s Attic, Escape My Room
- Spellbound, Rise
- Tomb of Anubis, 13th Gate
Exactly half the featured games rose to the top as favorites. There isn’t one best way to create an escape room!
Creating Community
It was heartwarming to see these folks come together to play games, set records, have fun, share stories of favorite games, and laugh over terrible escape room experiences.
The games are fun, but for us, escape rooms are about the people that we share them with.
We met so many incredible people with different backgrounds, stories, experiences, and other interests.
The Experiment Continues
We’re working on what comes next. Where else can we go? What games will we showcase? What other formats can we tinker with to bring this community together?
The Escape Immerse Explore Tours of New York and New Orleans were both massive experiments… albeit experiments that Lisa and I obsessively thought through, from game line up, to transportation, to the puzzle that we hid in the welcome information and sealed in wax… but it was still mad science.
We thank all of those who popped the stopper off of the Erlenmeyer flask and joined us in drinking this crazy concoction.
Through this we’ve learned so much about player behavior and running events. We have many more ideas for how to deliver an even better experience.
We had the best weekend with all of y’all and we cannot wait to do it again.
If you were not able to attend New York or New Orleans and you would like to receive an email announcement for the next tour, please contact us.
The tour was fantastic. I just wish we had all had the opportunity to play Cutthroat, considering you said it was the featured game of the tour!
I really wish we could have put everyone into it. We had every single session booked for the entire day, and that was without fully appreciating how popular this game was going to be.
I’m sure 42 out of 42 attendees thought Team Spira did an AMAZING job in preparing and executing this event. The degree of difficulty in planning was off the charts yet everything flowed smoothly – kinda like they have done this a couple hundred times before. It’s just not possible to find a more competent and congenial duo!