Escape room enthusiasts not doing well…
Hey everyone, new to Reddit, just looking for some feedback or advice from specifically owners. We have owned an escape room for 3 years. Design all our own games. We have run into a problem continually since opening. I have read tons of forums, papers, articles, anything I can find to try to fix the issue with no luck. Our problem is that we are finding enthusiasts are doing pretty badly at our rooms a good amount of the time. Even the room we built for kids that 11 year olds solve without adult help. We find that the average player (under 20 escape rooms played) do great! Hit right at the average every time. Then we get the enthusiasts and a lot of the time they do terrible. They have failed our kids room that has a 90% escape rate. We have made sure locks are clear and the room makes sense based on all the stats and testing. I see a lot of overthinking or ignoring obvious clues/ giving up when their first idea didn’t work (like expecting it to be an RFID when it’s actually a more unique unexpected approach). There are other enthusiasts and they do amazing, crush the room and get leaderboard. But of all enthusiasts I’d say this is probably a third of them. Is this just an us problem or do others see this happening as well? We just aren’t sure what to do at this point. I’ve seen a lot of owners say to forget the enthusiasts, but we genuinely care and want all to enjoy. Plus they are the only ones rating on Morty, some seem annoyed when leaving ( thank god we havnt had a single thumbs down) but don’t want that to happen, we want everyone to have fun.