Room Escape Artist

We’ve been running Escape, Immerse, Explore Tours since 2017, and we do so with the same critical eye that we apply to everything that we do.

When we ran our first Tour in New York City, it was our home market. All that we wanted to do was show off our local favorite games and meet some fellow escape room people. We never intended to run a second Tour, but then again, we never expected 24 people to show up to New York. And we really didn’t expect most of those people to ask us, “Where are we going next?” at the conclusion of the event.

Success*

We have gone on to run a total of 16 tours to 7 different regions. Along the way we’ve run into the best big problem: We almost never have enough capacity for all of the people who want to join us. And that’s not even getting into the fact that we barely market our Tours.

We have amazing guests, and the kind of guest-retention rate that small businesses dream of. The result of this is that we get to know our guests very well, and use that knowledge to build better and better schedules for them. Context matters, and if there’s one thing that we’re great at, it’s absorbing context and using it in our work.

I say this because I want to make sure that it’s clear, we have a problem to deal with, but I’m not complaining… It’s the best kind of problem.

*Problems, Solutions, & Problems

At the conclusion of every Tour, Lisa and I write an approximately 20 page assessment of every detail – big and small – and make recommendations to our future selves in the quest for producing the best tour experience not just for our guests, but also for the host companies, and… if possible… ourselves.

We practice what we preach when it comes to experience design.

After writing a number of these self-assessments, we noticed one problem that we didn’t have a plan to solve:

The Tours sell out fast.

And this means that we are saying no to a lot of folks. And on top of that, there are plenty of people who don’t even bother to try to get tickets because they know that a Tour has already sold out. And to top it off, because we tend to sell out quickly, we don’t even have a plan to market Tours because it’s rarely necessary.

Like I said, “good problem.” Not complaining.

We decided to try and take a stab at resolving this capacity problem by attacking it from 3 fronts:

1. We revamped our sales process, tying it more closely to our Patreon community to ensure that the people who help us keep the lights on, our mouths fed, and the servers running get priority.
2. We adjusted our schedules and contracts to allow for some Tours to expand past the original capacity. We began building in the ability to bring more than 48 people along with us.
3. We formalized the role of Tour Support, bringing along more help to ensure that everything ran smoothly (and that Lisa and I get one morning off per Tour)

All of this let us expand capacity to an incredible degree while improving the quality of the experience.

That Brings us to Paris

We recently visited Paris and adored the escape rooms that we played… so we decided to bring a Tour.

Our initial plans accounted for our typical 48 person event, but we built in the ability to expand up to 72 people if needed.

And… this was needed.

48 tickets sold out extremely fast… They went almost exclusively to our Patreon backers. Then the additional 24 sold out, primarily to past Tour guests, who also had the ability to buy during pre-sale.

We had believed that we would be promoting general tickets for Escape Immerse Explore Paris 2026 today, but instead, we are announcing that tickets are completely sold out.

I cannot say that we will find new ways to expand our capacity for future Tours, but I can promise that we’ll continue to try.

If you’ve never been on a Tour and are interested, please shoot us a message via our Contact Page. It helps us to understand who is interested, and we will include you on the Tour mailing list. (We do not sell your information.)

Appreciation

This has been a very long path to saying: thank you to everyone who supports us by coming on our Tours, backing us on Patreon, and attending the Reality Escape Convention (which does still have some tickets available).

When we started doing all of this, we never really expected that anyone would show up to an event organized by strangers on the internet… but the support that we’ve received over the years has been incredible. With every post, podcast, and event, we do our best to honor that support.

And if you didn’t get a ticket to Paris, but wanted one, I truly am sorry. Believe me, we want to bring everyone that we possibly can… and if the event goes as well as I think it will… I’m sure we’ll return. Also, please join the waitlist. You never know.

Special shout out to those who joined this month: Patrick Pilon, Kam, Andrei Tanase, Edwin, Chuck Kaplan-Smith, Rik Stapelbroek, Heather, Holly R, Tammy Wetzel, Guerric, Derek Gunderson, Kurtis Foote, Cheryl Szender, Troy Armstrong, and Justin Weber

To those of you reading who have the means, we hope you’ll consider joining this wonderful group of supporters.

Support Room Escape Artist’s Mission

There are lots of ways to support Room Escape Artist, like buying from Amazon or Etsy after clicking into the links included in this post or backing us on Patreon.

The money that we make from these helps us to grow the site and continue to add more value to the community that we love so much.