I didn’t know what a carpenter’s square was.
I’m not being humble. I’m being literal. When my father-in-law asked me for one while helping us trim the legs off our new barstools, I had to ask what it was. This was right around the time I was teaching myself electronics from an Arduino kit designed for kids. I was a grown man following a beginner’s guide, wiring LEDs in my garage, trying to figure out how a resistor worked so I could build a puzzle that would eventually go inside an escape room that didn’t exist yet.
That was 2015. I had just become a father, I was tired of travelling for work, and I had this idea that I couldn’t shake, I wanted to build something of my own. Something real. Something I could touch. The puzzles came to me at night while I was rocking my kids to sleep. I’d stand there in the dark, swaying back and forth, and my brain would just start building things. Mechanisms. Sequences. Locks. Stories.
My wife Annie is my partner and the creative lifeblood of the business. Together we turned those late-night ideas into AdventurEscape, our first escape room venture. We had no industry connections, no design background, no construction experience, and almost no money. What we had was obsession.
Ten years later, I’ve designed over a dozen games, built every set and prop with my own hands using electronics and tools I had to teach myself, and operated one of the highest volume escape room facilities in the northeast. I did most of it myself. Not because I wanted to. Because that’s what it took.
Here’s what that decade taught me.
You Will Learn by Doing or You Will Not Learn at All
Nobody is coming to train you. There is no escape room school. There is no manual for building a secret door that works 5,000 times without breaking, or wiring a magnetic lock to a puzzle sequence, or creating an experience that makes a group of strangers feel like a team in under ten minutes.
You learn by building something, watching it break, fixing it, and building it again. The guy who didn’t know what a carpenter’s square was now designs full multi-room immersive experiences with custom electronics, programmed lighting, and mechanical props. Not because I was good at it right away. Because I showed up at my own business every day for ten years and refused to stop figuring things out.
That applies to everything: construction, electrical, plumbing, marketing, sales, customer service, event management, accounting. When you’re the only one, you learn all of it or you close.
People Are Endlessly Surprising
I’ve watched thousands of groups play my rooms. Families, corporate teams, couples, strangers, kids, grandparents, first dates, bachelor parties. You put people in a room with a ticking clock and a set of problems, and you see who they really are. Fast.
There’s a personality type I call The Weatherman: the person who leads loudly in the wrong direction. First to speak up, last to get it. Every group has one. They command attention, they project confidence, and they pull the whole team off course. You’ve worked with this person. You might be married to this person. You might be this person.
The people who actually move the needle are almost never the loudest. They’re the ones who communicate with their teammates. They ask questions instead of barking orders. They’re humble enough to wonder why they’re doing something instead of just trusting their gut. In escape rooms, in business, and in life, the person who stops to ask “wait, why are we doing it this way?” is the one who solves the puzzle.
I didn’t read that in a book. I watched it happen live, over and over, for ten years.
The X-Factor Will Test What You’re Made Of
Going into March of 2020, we had just finished our best quarter ever. Our first year in business we did less than $20,000 total. By early 2020, we were doing over $20,000 a month. We had almost $10,000 prebooked for March alone. It felt like we were finally taking off.
Then we went to Florida to visit my mother. On the way home, everybody in the airport was wearing masks. By the time we landed, almost every March booking had canceled.
Within weeks, every competitor in the area shut down. I refused. I felt an obligation to my employees and my customers and I wasn’t going to be the one to quit. Then the governor issued a shutdown order. Originally it was supposed to be two weeks. We didn’t reopen until January of 2021.
I’m not going to pretend that was a chapter about grit or business strategy. That was a chapter about survival. Faith and family are the lifeboat. They got me through a really dark time. And when we came out the other side, we came out different. Sharper. Leaner. More grateful. REACT Premium Escape Rooms was born out of that period, and everything we’ve built since carries the weight of knowing how fast it can all disappear.
Active Entertainment Is Bigger Than Escape Rooms
Escape rooms are one format. A great one. But the core of what we do is bigger than any single format. We design experiences where people don’t sit and watch. They participate. They think. They laugh. They get moved in ways they didn’t expect. Jimmy Valvano once said that if you’ve done those three things in a day, that’s a full day. That’s also the promise of Active Entertainment. Not passive consumption. Not sitting in a dark theater staring at a screen. Real, shared, human experience that asks something of you and gives something back. I believe that’s the future of how people choose to spend their time and money together.
If You Asked Me for Advice, I’d Say Let’s Go
If a friend told me they wanted to open an escape room, I wouldn’t warn them. I wouldn’t list all the reasons it’s hard. I wouldn’t tell them about the nights you spend alone in your building fixing a prop at midnight or the months where you wonder if you made a terrible mistake.
I’d say let’s go.
Because the truth is, this work has given me everything. It made me a builder, a designer, a storyteller, and an entrepreneur. It deepened my appreciation for my family and my faith. It showed me things about human nature that I never would have seen from the other side of a desk.
Ten years ago I was a guy with a baby in one arm and a beginner’s Arduino kit in the other, standing in his garage, not knowing what a carpenter’s square was, dreaming about puzzles in the dark.
Now I write about it.
Jack Rose is the founder of REACT Premium Escape Rooms in Windsor Locks, CT and an active entertainment pioneer. Read more at jackrosewrites.com.
This post is part of the Active Entertainment branch of jackrosewrites.com. The thread that connects everything starts with the manifesto: There Is No Escape Room.