Left to right: Owners Chris Purcell, Janice Galizia, Lauren Galizia
Waking up in a darkly lit room is unsettling enough. But it’s downright horrifying to wake up with the realization that you’ve been shackled to the wall, and that you were kidnapped while on your way home. Your kidnapper is nowhere in sight, but you know that it’s only a matter of time before he returns to do unspeakable things to you.
It’s a nightmare come true—or is it?
Normally, no one would want to be trapped in a murderer’s dungeon–unless, of course, they had decided to play “Killer Countdown,” an escape room presented by Challenge Escape Rooms for the Halloween season. Halloween has come and gone, but the company will continue offering Queens residents a chance to experience this increasingly popular, interactive game.
Escape rooms, which have only recently begun cropping up in the United States after widespread success across Europe and Asia, are a simple concept: players are locked in a room for a limited amount of time (typically one hour) and must use clues and puzzles riddled throughout the room to find the key and get out before the clock runs out.
Schoolteacher Chris Purcell, who co-owns Challenge Escape Rooms with his wife Janice Galizia and his sister-in-law Lauren Galizia, says that he and Janice had their first experience in an escape room in March of this year.
“I was trying to figure out a fun, unusual thing that we hadn’t done ever, for a birthday,” he said. “We always talked about going to these escape rooms, so I bought a couple tickets to one.”
The experience had such a profound impact that afterward, Chris and Janice bought tickets for a second room, this time bringing Lauren along.
“The first escape room we did I honestly was very nervous. Is this scary? Is there an actor? I am claustrophobic, so I was like, ‘How big is this room?’” she said. “As soon as we got in, I loved it. I’m someone who’s always loved these riddles and puzzles and math problems. That’s personally something that I enjoyed.”
The ball had been set in motion. By June—only two-and-half months after their first visits—Chris, Janice and Lauren had secured premises for their fledgling enterprise, created two uniquely-themed rooms, and were ready to bring this thrilling new game to Queens.
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For anyone looking for a good drink or a great meal, Bell Boulevard, a lively street in Bayside, Queens, is the place to be. The Bayside Village Business Improvement District, which services Bell Boulevard, lists 62 different food-serving establishments in its online business directory. About 30 of those are restaurants and bars; the rest of the street is interspersed with retail shops, professional and health services, tutoring centers, and the odd psychic or two.
As far as entertainment goes, though, there are few options—in fact, the only traditional option available for a date or a night out on the town is to catch a movie at the theater in nearby Bay Terrace. On a purely local level, this made Bell Boulevard an ideal spot for Chris, Janice and Lauren to open their business.
“Usually people go to bars or restaurants as part of a night out,” Chris said. “I think what we provide here is that second part of the day. Instead of going to a movie, which is probably the usual for a lot of couples or groups, you could do this. This is something that’s much more social, a different form of entertainment than people are probably used to.”
“I think it’s really fulfilling to bring something new to the area, to have a new activity or something new to look forward to,” Lauren added.
Demand for this specific type of entertainment isn’t just limited to Bayside. According to listings on Yelp.com, New York is home to ten escape room venues, seven of which are in Manhattan. Of the other three, one is in Mineola, Long Island and the other is in Williamsburg, Brooklyn; Challenge Escape Rooms is the only company operating in Queens. Chris says that he, Janice and Lauren wanted to open their business on Bell Boulevard, but kept their options open to Queens as a whole.
“The demand was there, in Manhattan, but the people…were coming from Long Island, they were coming from Queens,” he said. “We needed an extra place that was going to accommodate all those people going into Manhattan that would rather not go to Manhattan. If it wasn’t going to be here on Bell Boulevard it was going to be somewhere relatively close.”
“We also are very close to transportation,” Lauren said, referring to the Long Island Rail Road station across the street from Challenge Escape Rooms, as well as the three MTA bus lines that make stops along Bell Boulevard. “We often get people that aren’t coming from the local [area] that ask, “Is there a train station or a parking lot?’”
The increasing demand and expanding market for companies providing escape games also played a key role in the speed with which the three owners opened their business. In any small, but steadily growing industry—particularly one as peculiar as this—getting in early is crucial.
“If we didn’t open something here, the way that the trend was going, someone else was going to do it,” Chris said. “We had to strike pretty quickly because there was potential for another place to open before us.
“We went to our first [room], and it was such a great experience that it didn’t take us very long to think, ‘Will other people like this?’” Lauren said. “I think that knowing that this was an activity that so many people could enjoy made the process of starting it much easier.”
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Since opening on June 19, Challenge Escape Rooms has provided three different thrilling scenarios to choose from. For the first three months, players could choose “The Unsolved Case,” in which they were locked in the office of the lead detective investigating a horrible crime committed against the players’ families. The objective was to find enough evidence to prove the suspect’s guilt and then escape.
Alternatively, players could opt for the still ongoing laboratory-themed room, “The Virus.” After an experimental drug trial goes wrong and leaves everyone in the lab infected with a deadly virus, players have to race against time to find the vaccine and escape before the hour is up.
“Killer Countdown” is the latest room to be offered, and will soon give way once again to “The Unsolved Case,” as well as a Santa’s Workshop room planned for December.
For a non-holiday room like “The Unsolved Case,” one can expect to pay $28 for the hour, though groups of 8 or more get a 10% discount. Rooms like “Killer Countdown” or “Santa’s Workshop Escape” run slightly higher, typically between $30 and $35 per person.
Chris explained—in brief detail, so as not to give away anything that might spoil any future experiences—that the types of clues and puzzles found in the rooms included lighting tricks, math clues, repetition clues, and even a literal jigsaw puzzle. Chris credited Janice and Lauren as being the driving forces behind the rooms’ designs.
“They think of the initial blueprints of ideas for escape rooms,” he said. “They’ll throw out ideas to each other and it’ll usually spitball from there.”
“It’s definitely a collaborative creation,” Lauren said. “Sometimes it happens all in one sitting; me and my sister will sit down and we’ll go back and forth. And sometimes it comes together over a period of time. We started The Virus [with the thought], ‘We really would like a lab.’ And over time we came up with the story. That was something we really wanted with our rooms, a full story.”
Lauren says she and Janice—who has experience in live theater—enjoy the theatrical aspect of the escape room. Chris, on the other hand, loves the cooperative nature of the game.
“I’m a teacher, and I love the idea of collaborating and working with groups,” he said. “I think that’s a really important element of the education system that’s not usually emphasized on, but it’s really a skill that’s needed throughout the workplace and throughout your personal life.”
Expounding further on that point, he added, “If you’re not going to collaborate with other people, you are going to fail this game. It’s not like, one smart guy who figures everything out. You can’t rely on that guy throughout your 60 minutes or you’re not going to do well in this. Everyone’s going have an important role.”
It’s precisely that collaborative element, coupled with its location, which has made Challenge Escape Rooms attractive as a team-building activity. Chris and Lauren both explained that numerous companies have reached out to them about hosting team-building nights, and often ask whether there are restaurants nearby to top off the night. The largest and most recent group came from Hertz car rental, which brought in a team of forty people in four groups of ten.
Clearly, being locked in a room with a time limit and a looming threat is an excellent way to encourage cooperation—all four groups from Hertz made it out of their rooms before the hour was up.
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How does a company like Challenge Escape rooms—which is both new and part of an emerging industry—market itself? Both Chris and Lauren said that the power of social media, particularly targeted, regional Facebook advertisements, has helped a great deal in drawing customers. Articles in local papers such as the Queens Courier and the Times Ledger, which have widespread readership throughout Queens, have also helped their business grow. Running a fundraiser for breast cancer awareness in October got them a spot on the Verizon FiOS-exclusive program “Push Pause,” which covers local, in-depth community stories.
“Killer Countdown” also provided an excellent opportunity to advertise themselves specifically to people looking for a haunted house or other scary activity for Halloween by listing themselves on sites like Long Island Haunted House. Most noteworthy is the fact that they were chosen as one of AM New York’s top 8 Halloween attractions in New York City, an honor Chris says they were lucky to get.
“We’ve also worked with local businesses within Bayside,” said Lauren. “Several of the restaurants [on Bell Boulevard] have our postcards and we’ve also advertised in materials. We have postcards and flyers that have gone up at some local colleges.”
However, Facebook remains their biggest method of selling the game. Whether a group escapes or not, they get to take a photo together after the hour’s over, which Chris says is a key aspect of advertising on their Facebook page.
“What’s convenient for this business is that escape rooms before us have always used Facebook as a resource to post pictures, [and] you’re always seeing people fooling around in those pictures, smiles on their faces,” he said. “And to throw that on Facebook and to show that people are having a great time I think has certainly helped attract people to come here because it seems like people enjoy what we’re selling.”
Chris says that the business has been doing better and better each month, so much so that it has necessitated offering additional time slots on Mondays for groups that are unable to come in during normal hours Thursday through Friday. He also expects that their policy of offering a new room theme every three months will be a reason people keep coming back.
“It provides a challenge, but it also accommodates the people that have really enjoyed their experiences here and are introduced to totally different experiences,” he said. “I think people will keep coming as long as the product’s good.”
Apart from the Halloween room, which is more intense in its theme and story than the rooms normally offered, Lauren says they were especially interested in making their game family-friendly and attractive to people of all ages.
“You could come with your kids, you could come with your friends who were younger,” she said. “It didn’t have to be an event that only adults could come to. That is definitely something that we wanted to incorporate when we started our own escape room: it could be family friendly and everyone could enjoy.”
