Longtime friends open escape room business in Carson City

The way Tracey Hudson and Jennifer Smith met in Carson City as kids has a touch of fortuity to it. But when they work together, in this case on opening escape rooms in the capital city, their minds meld into something more like destiny. They can finish each other’s sentences. They can hash out ideas until the perfect concept rises between them. They can compete with each other on any task and laugh about it.

Both 54, Hudson and Smith have known each other since they were 10.

“We met right on Mountain Street walking to softball practice,” recalled Smith. “We didn’t know that we were going to the same practice. We were both holding baseball gloves.”

“We ended up being on the same team,” said Hudson, adding they’ve been teaming up ever since.

For instance, they started a football league that ran for nearly a decade, the Carson City Flag Football League. They wrote a children’s book together, “Clarice in the Clouds.” And they’re still called upon to write murder mystery parties for friends.

“That’s the story of our friendship. We’ve always been kind of like that. Like, ‘Hey, let’s just do this,’” said Hudson.

The duo’s latest collaboration is Escape 36 at 716 N. Carson St., suite 108. Two themed escape rooms and a third room for a crime-scene experience occupy a newly-improved suite in the same building that houses Visit Carson City, on the north edge of downtown. In the corner of the new business stands a set of lockers where customers can lock their belongings, anything that could entice them to cheat. Behind a curtain sit monitors and headphones where the business partners and their team of four employees can monitor the escape rooms. A list of rules hangs from the front wall. “Have fun!” is the top imperative.

Escape 36 officially opened April 26 and so far, business has been promising, the partners explained. They’ve hosted families with participants ranging in age. They’ve already seen a corporate training for a local company.

“We’ve been talking about it for several years,” said Hudson. “At one point, she (Smith) had a really great space.”

“I’ve thought of doing different escape-like experiences all over town,” said Smith. “I’m on the board for the Downtown Business Association, so I’ve thought of doing certain things for them as well, and then it kind of evolved into an idea…”

“We’ve always said there needs to be an escape room in Carson,” Hudson said.

According to Anecia Ascalon, writing for www.theescapegame.com, escape rooms sprang from similar kinds of videogames in which players were trapped and had to problem-solve.

“Takao Kato from Kyoto created the first real life escape game in 2007,” according to Ascalon. “The popularity of ‘escape the room’ video games and his personal desire for adventure inspired him to try something new.”

This new type of recreation spread through Asia and Europe and eventually to the U.S. circa 2012, Ascalon said.

Hudson and Smith can remember their first escape rooms in Reno in 2013. They were hooked. Characteristic of their relationship, they began challenging each other to try new ones.

“Every time me and my kids go on any kind of family vacation, we always find one that we haven’t done,” Hudson said. “Because once you do them — until you change them, or someone opens a new one — you got to go find them somewhere else.”

Smith shouted out “Dead Silence” at Reno-based Deadline as a standout. Hudson pointed to The Bureau escape-room outfit in Orlando, Fla., as a recent favorite.

When asked why escape rooms have grown so popular in the U.S, Smith and Hudson had different, but not unrelated answers.

“I think it’s the immersive-ness of it,” said Hudson. “You get to get out of the house.”

“We’re all so wrapped up in our screens now, it’s nice to have a tangible experience,” said Smith. “It’s something different to do, especially in Carson.”

The friends have other jobs. Hudson, who now lives in Reno, is vice president of risk management for Caesars Entertainment. Smith, who still lives in Carson and has an office on Telegraph Street, runs a graphic design firm called Agency 36.

“The interesting thing was in August, we said, ‘Let’s just do it,’ and by September, we had rented this,” said Hudson.

The partners used their own resources for startup costs, which they estimated to be $45,000 to $60,000. They had to obtain a special use permit at the Carson City Planning Commission last fall because the proposed use in the 1,550-square-foot space wasn’t defined in code. The permitting process led to fire alarm and sprinkler updates, they said.

“You are safer in here than anywhere else in this building, and you don’t even need to be,” Hudson joked.

The results of that investment are “The Locker Room” and “Triple Crossed?” The former is designed like a locker room for a football team, and players must find a bomb and defuse it before it takes out the stadium. The latter is based on a bank robbery, and players must find a contested stash of money.

The third room in the suite currently houses a crime-scene activity. A Mark Twain-themed mystery was set to debut over Mark Twain Days May 10-12, and the partners plan to switch up crimes every couple of months.

Escape rooms pose a unique business challenge for those in the industry: how to keep customers coming back after rooms have been solved? Hudson and Smith both expressed their determination to keep offerings fresh.

“We’re going to kind of keep an eye on it and see how it goes,” said Smith. “If one of our rooms starts dying down, and less people are coming to it, then we’ll consider changing it out or expanding.”

Smith added she’s not worried about escape-room answers getting out. She said the culture doesn’t lend itself to cheating.

“I don’t think that happens very often because escape room people want to do the escape room. They want to come in; they want to do the puzzles. We don’t want people to tell us the secrets for other escape rooms. We want to go experience those for ourselves,” she said. “People pay good money to come in and have the whole experience.”

The rooms at Escape 36 don’t fall into an easy, cookie-cutter model. They were conceptualized and built from scratch, from the storylines to each physical prop.

“When people come in who are familiar with escape rooms, we want them to feel they’re in an escape room — we want them to get that familiar feeling — but to have new puzzles they haven’t experienced before … and just a complete new experience.”

Escape 36 has seen customers from Carson, Minden, Gardnerville, Fernley and Reno, Smith said.

“We obviously hope to market to Reno as those people have gone through all the escape rooms,” she said.

She added: “We’re hoping that by the end of the year, we have made our startup back.”

Rates and reservations can be found at www.escape36.com. Regular business hours are 4 to 8 p.m. Thursday, 4 to 9 p.m. Friday, noon to 9:30 p.m. Saturday and noon to 8 p.m. Sunday. Rooms are also available by appointment. For information, call 775-297-3013.