Today we’d like to introduce you to Zoltán Honti and Raja Sahi.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Zoltán and Raja. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Raja: I am a co-founder of Escapedom. I’m originally from New Delhi, India and have lived in the US for 10+ years now. My professional experience is in the area of delivering technology solutions for major movie studios. I have a passion for creativity, brain teasers and puzzles, making Escapedom a perfect pastime for me.
Zoltán: I am a co-founder of Escapedom. I’m also not originally from the U.S., having grown up in Hungary, I came to the States over 12 years ago. I’m a cinematographer by trade and really enjoy creating visual environments. Having seen the success of escape rooms spread through Hungary and greater Eastern Europe I had a feeling they would catch on here in the States at some point.
Zoltán and I have been friends for a long time and always had an idea to do a passion project together, outside of our regular day-to-day jobs. Zoltán being from Hungary, had read about escape rooms being popular there and doing well. So we had done a few searches in LA years back and there weren’t many companies as compared to now. We had hoped to be the first but obviously we weren’t. 🙂 We both really enjoy puzzles and like working with our hands and solving things, so it seemed like a great fit for combined passions. Escapedom was officially created just about 2.5 years ago and we officially opened our first room about 2 years ago.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
Our biggest learning from this process has been somewhat introspective for us. We, meaning the owners of Escapedom, sometimes get blocked on an idea when we just focus on a puzzle or story we have on our own. We’ve both learned that when we expand the ideation to a group of people, different people will bring different ideas to the project. Similarly speaking, a better movie is made by a team of people rather than just one individual, so we’ve learned to take our time and consider all the possibilities across various ideas.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Escapedom is an Escape Room that allows guests to come in and be totally immersed in the experience we are giving them. We have 2 rooms open now and a third on the way to be opened later this year. Our current rooms are The Den of the Occult and The Lair and our upcoming room is The Cranial Carnival.
We have discovered that most people have never heard of an Escape Room while those who have associate it with something scary or being trapped in someone’s basement. Our rooms are different in that they are not designed to be scary and in fact we try to keep it a little quirky instead.
We’ve really brought together a great intersection of technology and gameplay. Our puzzles work really well for groups because we’ve designed them in such a flow that they’re not very linear, giving the experience of multiple people working on puzzles simultaneously. So there’s not a lot of room for boredom when people play our rooms, even with large groups. The technology used in our rooms is really a living and breathing part of our puzzles. The surprise elements usually bring a smile to players’ faces, which makes us happy.
Pricing:
- 1-2 players – $35 per person
- 3-4 players – $32 per person
- 5-7 players – $30 per person
- 8+ players – $28 per person
Contact Info:
- Address: 1373 Westwood Blvd
2nd floor
Los Angeles, CA 90024 - Website: www.escapedom.com
- Phone: 424-256-5093
- Email: [email protected]
- Instagram: @escapedom
- Facebook: @escapedom
- Twitter: @escapedom
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/escapedom-los-angeles
Getting in touch: VoyageLA is built on recommendations from the community; it’s how we uncover hidden gems, so if you know someone who deserves recognition please let us know here.
