By C.D. DESALVO
Hays Post
When Kat McEwan bought a gift for her husband’s birthday last year, she had no idea that the gift would turn into a growing business a year later. In February 2016, Kat and Jeremiah McEwan participated in their first “Escape Room” experience in Kansas City.
“I found something on the Groupon app, and we’re big gamers and it was his birthday. I thought he would enjoy it,” said Kat. “I honestly didn’t really want to do it. I didn’t think it sounded like fun — I was wrong. We had a blast and, the second we left, we starting talking about opening one up.”
“There’s not a whole lot of stuff to do in Hays, so we thought it would go over well with the local community and all the college kids. It would give them an alternative for something to do both during the week and weekends,” Jeremiah said.
After some internet research, talking to owners of Escape Rooms across the country, and months of looking for the right building, the McEwans registered their business in April 2016, saved up some money and officially opened Escape Hays in March 2017.
“The games that we make are our own, but the concept on how to build escape rooms we got from online research. We learned what works, what doesn’t work and what we should definitely stay away from,” Jeremiah said.
Escape rooms have recently gained popularity around the country because they feature a physical adventure game where participants solve puzzles using various clues, hints and strategies to complete the objectives given to them. There is usually a time limit to reach specific goals set by the creators of the challenges.
“When we did the Kansas City one, there were two escape rooms in Kansas City, one in Manhattan, and one in Wichita,” Jeremiah said. “A year later, there’s five in Kansas City, three in Wichita, one in Hutchinson, Topeka, Manhattan, Salina and two in Hays.”
Escape Hays currently features two different rooms. The first is a “CIA Mission,” during which players have 60 minutes to “save the world” from a terrorist attack. The second room is called “Room 1867,” where players will find clues to figure out a way to escape from a hotel room.
“We try to make our rooms immersive so it feels like you’re a CIA operative trying to stop a terrorist attack or feeling like you are actually trapped in a hotel room and have to figure out how to get out,” Kat said.
Before opening Escape Hays, the McEwans hired Bryan Snyder-Brown to manage the business and to help with graphic design and video production for commercials. Kat writes the scripts for the commercials and Jeremiah wrote the software that controls the games and is the communication between the owners and the players during their time in the rooms.
“The beauty of working with the McEwans and building our own website is we can have names up on our website and on our leaderboards before they even leave the building. It is all done through a spreadsheet that auto-updates through our website. That way if there are any problems, we can just log in a fix it ourselves,” said Snyder-Brown.
Another advantage of being in charge of every aspect of a business is that accommodations can be made a lot faster and easier.
“A thing that I love about the fact that we have built everything ourselves and designed everything ourselves is that I’m a mom of a 5- year-old and I don’t think I would want my child playing in a game that deals with terrorism or things like that so we can change it. We have backups to give families a more family-friendly option,” said Kat.
What sets Escape Hays apart from the rest of the escape rooms is how the owners have managed to implement the history and community of Hays into the puzzles and clues. They plan to implement a third room in the summer for the 150th anniversary of Fort Hays, which will be saloon-themed and based on the local legend of Hangman’s Bridge in Hays. Escape Hays is also planning a Halloween-themed room in October that will play on the legend of the local ghost of the “Blue Light Lady,” and a Christmas-themed room after Thanksgiving.
Escape Hays is located at 1506 Vine in Hays. More information can be found on their website at www.escapehays.com.
You can also check out their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/escapehays/.