Why Narrow Escape Rooms?
We chose the name Narrow Escape Rooms, because we love the play on words. Narrowly escaping or Narrowly succeeding in an escape room is such an adrenaline rush!
Our Story
Narrow Escape Rooms is a family-owned business operated by Shelley, Craig & Kit.
The first of us to try an escape room was Kit, afterwards she posted some photos on Facebook and we were immediately intrigued!
We went altogether, along with Shelley’s husband Scott, to play an escape room in Parramatta. We had a great time figuring out what to do and were amazed at some of the seemingly magical events that happened (we can’t give any spoilers). It had blown our minds even though we didn’t succeed our mission in time!
Kit encouraged us to go back and play the escape room she had played originally so she could talk about it with us. Craig, Shelley & Scott went back to play Kit’s first escape room. Not only did we succeed this time but we beat Kit’s time! Lol.
Afterwards, we excitedly sat around for hours talking about our experiences, reliving the puzzles, what we thought would be some cool themes and some ideas on how to make the games even more immersive. Not many experiences got us this chatty!
The following weekend, Craig called Shelley to invite themselves over. By this time, he had outlined a storyline for our first game Launch, he was so inspired, it kept him awake at night. We started to think, should we do this?
We were already addicted, so we went and played more escape rooms to see what else was out there, including an escape room weekend to Melbourne for Shelley’s 40th birthday!
None of us had run a business before, we weren’t sure we had the tools to make it happen, it was also a big step to leave the safety of a 9-5 career for a business that has its majority of business at nights and weekends, and we had young kids. So, we met with a Business Connect Advisor, Michelle. She was enthusiastic about the business and gave us some contacts to get started. After her advice, we were in!
With Craig’s experience as an IT Systems Engineer and Kit’s in the electronic trade, between them, they understood how to create some of the “magic” we had experienced in escape rooms! They are also very creative and were able to come up with the storyline’s, props and puzzles featured in our games.
With Shelley’s experience in Human Resources, WHS, payroll, administration, finance and social media, she rounded out the team.
As proud Penrith locals, we knew our Escape Rooms had to be located in Penrith! We love it when we have first time escapers and we get to blow their minds, like ours where that first time (and many times since)!
Narrow Escape Rooms Launch game opened in October 2018. The Inheritance followed in November 2019 and Undetected in December 2020.
Check out some of our first Escape Room photos in the video below
