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Tampa entrepreneurs John and Kristi Collins first came across escape rooms during a family trip in Europe in 2014.
The first one they discovered was sold out a week in advance. But they found another one in the next city on their trip.
They were immediately hooked. And by May 2015, they took on a bigger role in the “worldwide craze,” as John Collins puts it, and were operating their own escape room on Memorial Highway by the Tampa International Airport.
The escape room concept is simple. Each team of people has one hour to find clues and solve a puzzle on how to escape a room. But each room and puzzle varies significantly.
At the Collins' location in Tampa, Can You Escape? there are three themed rooms: office, medieval and London. The office theme was the debut, and the medieval and London concepts were new additions in 2016. The medieval theme is temporary.
Back at the time of their vacation in Europe — around December 2014 — there were only 12 escape rooms in the United States, John Collins tells Coffee Talk. Now there are upwards of 500 nationwide, including multiple escape rooms in Tampa. Another couple, husband-wife entrepreneurs Brent Alexander and Renee Ryckman, runs Escape Countdown. That company has locations in Sarasota and Tampa.
As the business moves deeper into 2016, finding the space to keep up with their growing number of ideas is the core issue for John and Kristi Collins. He says they have come up with about 10 other concepts but won't have room for all of them. Their goal for 2016 is to bring half of those to reality.
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