Reduce Your Escape Room Reset Time and Support More Patrons

We get it. It takes a lot to keep your escape room business running — and then one of your staff members calls in sick. You’re understaffed on your prime-time Saturday and have to reset rooms and deal with customers at the same time on top of everything else.

Something gets missed in a reset, the puzzles don't work, and nobody notices. It would've taken five seconds to flip that switch or reset that lock, but a group walks away with a disappointing experience: an escape room owner's worst nightmare.

Whether a lack of staff, an unexpected breakage, or delays from the new pandemic cleaning requirements, things happen that turn a great customer experience into a not-so-great one.

You're selling a one-time entertainment service so you have to get it right. Every workaround fix diminishes your offering, and every delay for an emergency repair risks losing some bookings through unexpected wait times. Whatever the case, your customers aren't singing your praises to their friends — they're warning them away.

Reducing the Reset Time in Escape Rooms

If you want your escape room business running smoothly with a healthy positive cash flow, it’s vital to get as many groups through as you can through with minimal reset times — especially with the added time spent sanitizing everything. We’ve got a few tips based on what we've heard from escape room owners.

Ensure Your Staff are Prepared

Making sure you have the correct number of staff for your rooms is important. Having backup/part time staff ready if someone is not able to make it can help prevent mistakes in high stress conditions. 

No one wants to enter a room to discover a lock already opened or a puzzle already solved. Beyond training your staff, having a checklist in place that gets checked every time will help limit the number of mistakes on resets. 

Invest in Good Props, Puzzles, and Design

Save time on the resets by thinking about them in the initial design. Select locks that are simple to reset, reduce how many small items that might get lost players need to handle, and think about securing unimportant loose props with hot glue or screws to avoid having to put them back in place — and reducing the surfaces you need to sanitize.

Of course, you need to keep the room interesting! But think about how you can achieve that perfect reset/fun balance as you’re designing. And look around your existing rooms to see where you can make improvements.

Virtual Reality Escape Rooms

The previous two tips can help with your existing physical rooms — but there’s another option entirely. There is one technology solution that can remove the room reset problem and reduce the cleaning and turnover time associated with escape rooms: virtual reality escape rooms.

Because it’s completely digital, virtual reality escape rooms have auto room resets with the click of a button. The hardware is the only touchpoint for the participants which greatly reduces the number of items that needs to be cleaned between visits. Mistakes in room resets are completely removed from the equation ensuring smooth transitions, high turnover and consistent reliable experiences for your patrons.

vrCAVE’s VR Escape Rooms

vrCAVE is proud to provide virtual reality escape experiences to more than 80 partners worldwide. We release a new room released yearly, meaning you get a growing library of incredible experiences that live alongside your existing physical rooms.

This year, if you're looking for an escape room option with minimal reset time and maintenance — along with the unique wow factor of taking people to locations difficult to create physically — think about adding virtual reality to your escape business.

Reach out to us anytime: learn more about becoming a partner here. Have any escape room reset tips of your own? Let us know!