We Did It! Narrow Escape Rooms Wins the 2026 Penrith Local Business Award for Tourism & Experiences
There are some moments in business that you know you’ll remember for a very long time.
For us, hearing the words Narrow Escape Rooms announced as the winner of the Tourism & Experiences category at the 2026 Penrith Local Business Awards was one of those moments.
We’ve been finalists in these awards every year since 2019, winning the category in 2021, so we know how much goes into getting to that stage.
But this year felt particularly special.
Eight years of Narrow Escape Rooms
Narrow Escape Rooms opened our first room, Launch, in October 2018.
What started as a family business built around our love of escape rooms has grown into five unique experiences, a wonderful team of Game Masters and thousands of teams walking through our doors.
There are four things at the heart of Narrow Escape Rooms:
- We’re locals.
- We’re family owned.
- We’re escape room enthusiasts.
- And we build escape rooms we’d like to play ourselves.
Those principles have guided us from the beginning.
They influence the stories we create, the puzzles we design, the technology and theming we incorporate and, ultimately, the experience we want our customers to have.
We’re not interested in simply building another escape room.
We want to build one that we’d be excited to book ourselves.
The past year has been a big one
The last couple of years have brought plenty of challenges and plenty of reasons to celebrate.
Our newest room, Hidden Temple, was a huge project that took around 18 months from the beginning of the build to opening our doors.
It also gave us the opportunity to expand into an additional suite, allowing us to grow Narrow Escape Rooms and create even more experiences for people visiting Penrith.
When Hidden Temple finally opened, seeing teams experience the room for the first time was incredibly rewarding.
And the response has been fantastic.
We’ve had people travelling from outside the area specifically to play it, alongside our wonderful local customers who have followed us from room to room.
Then came another opportunity.
Giving Mission Identity a new home
We love escape rooms, and we’re also part of a wider community of escape room enthusiasts and operators.
When we heard Expedition Sydney was thinking of closing and one of its escape rooms was going to disappear, we saw an opportunity to give the room another life.
We purchased Mission Identity, relocated it to Penrith and gave it a refresh, including changes to the storyline and new elements and surprises.
It is now our fifth escape room.
There’s something really special about taking a room that other enthusiasts have loved, giving it a new home and introducing it to a whole new audience.
And it reflects something we genuinely love about our industry.
While there are different escape room businesses around Western Sydney, we don’t see each other simply as competitors. We’re enthusiasts first. We want people to discover how much fun escape rooms can be, and we’re fortunate to be part of an industry where operators regularly share ideas and support each other.
Why this award means so much
The Penrith Local Business Awards aren’t simply about turning up on the night and receiving a trophy.
The journey begins with public voting. Businesses need enough votes to become finalists, we’re incredibly grateful to everyone who took the time to vote for us and help us reach that stage.
Once you’re a finalist, we completed a written submission answering questions about our business, our customer service, our team, our community involvement, sustainability and our future.
Then the judges selected the winner.
When Narrow Escape Rooms was announced as the winner, I was filled with big love in my heart, a tear in my eye and the wobbliest of legs.
We were surrounded by fantastic Penrith businesses, including other businesses in the tourism and experiences sector.
To be selected as the winner from such a strong group of local tourism businesses is something we’re incredibly proud of.
It’s not just recognition for one room or one achievement.
It’s recognition of the business we’ve spent almost eight years building.
Proud to be Penrith locals
Being based in Penrith has always been important to us.
We’re not simply a business operating in Penrith. We live here, work here, spend our time here and are part of the local community.
We employ local people, work with local businesses and tradespeople, support community fundraising and encourage people from outside the area to visit Penrith and experience what our region has to offer.
We’re proud to be part of a business community filled with people who are passionate about what they do.
And being recognised alongside those businesses makes this award even more meaningful.
A huge thank you
An award like this doesn’t belong to just Craig, Kit and myself as the owners.
It belongs to our fantastic Game Masters who bring our rooms to life and make sure our customers have an amazing experience.
It belongs to the people who have helped us create our rooms.
And it belongs to our customers.
Every person who has booked a game, recommended us to a friend, left a review, shared a post or voted for us has played a part in our journey.
We are incredibly grateful for every one of you.
What's next?
We’re not finished yet.
There are more stories to tell, more puzzles to design and more escape rooms we’d like to play ourselves.
Most importantly, we want to keep creating experiences that bring people together.
That’s what we love about escape rooms.
You can walk through our doors as a family, a group of friends, a school group or a workplace team. For the next hour, you’re working together, communicating, laughing, celebrating successes and occasionally yelling:
“I got it!”
And hopefully, when you walk back out, you’re already wondering:
“When can we come back?”
Thank you to everyone who voted for us, supported us and cheered us on.
And thank you to the judges for choosing Narrow Escape Rooms as the 2026 Penrith Local Business Award winner for Tourism & Experiences.
We’re incredibly proud to be a family-owned Penrith business, passionate escape room enthusiasts and, above all, locals who love what we do.
Here’s to the next chapter.
Shelley
Narrow Escape Rooms
Want to book an award winning escape room in Penrith? You know where to find us.
