Public vs. Private
Team Bonding
July 8, 2017
NM Escape Room on NM Living
August 23, 2017
We operated for 2 years having all of our sessions open for booking by groups up to 8 participants. What this means is that if a group of 4 books a scenario, there is the potential that another group of 4 could join them in that same scenario. We did it this way because that was pretty much an industry standard in the United States when we opened. All the various games we played operated under this policy, so we saw nothing wrong with emulating this practice.
We really hadn’t had any negative experiences in either the pairing of strangers in our escape room facility, or playing with strangers ourselves at other facilities, so it wasn’t really an issue. At first.
We’d heard the most European escape games did not practice this way. They are largely if not all private games. We were intrigued but still hesitant to make the change. It wasn’t until we had the personal experience of being paired with other escape room owners as well as newcomers to the concept in a few games out of state, that we learned first hand the downside of playing escape games with strangers. We ended up frustrated with a few of the other players and one poor man (first time player) got so upset that he walked out of the game leaving his wife and sons to essentially compete with the other overbearing players for puzzle time. This experience left us with the realization of what some of our customers must have gone through when playing our games. This, amongst other things, inspired us to make the move to private bookings. We made the switch a few months ago and haven’t looked back. It’s been very well received by our existing and new customers. Customer satisfaction as well as game master satisfaction is up. We only wish we had done it sooner. Come and check out what NM Escape Room has to offer! We are the perfect choice for all your special events.
