April 24, 2017

Meet Tri Nguyen of The Perfect Escape in Arlington

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Tri Nguyen.

Tri, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
The Big Bang Theory presented an escape room to me on an episode on Feb. 2015. I had to look it up to see if it was a real thing. After trying one out with a few friends of mine, I introduced it to my family later that year. We knocked out several rooms in Los Angels late 2015, and it dawned us after staying up late several nights with many ideas of our own, that we should make the rooms ourselves. We talked about it for several months, until Spring 2016, we decided to pursue our newfound hobby into a career. There’s a quote, “Choose a job you like, and you”ll never have to work a day in your life.” We all work full time jobs, and poured much blood, sweat, and tears into our rooms anytime we were not working. After much researching, planning, building, and experimenting we opened our doors to the public on Nov. 25, 2016. We are fully invested to bring our ideas to fruition for others to enjoy.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
As with any start up of any business, we face challenges. Escape rooms are a relatively new idea in the US, despite being invented in 2005 around the world. It took many trips to city hall, many talks with several different people, and advice from many more to make sure we cross our T’s and dot our I’s. It’s a hobby that’s exploding, so being different is a necessity to separate ourselves from many companies popping up around DFW. We are aiming to raise the bar by providing a more premium experience than others. This requires greater amount of investment, so currently we continue to work two full time jobs, thus time management is a necessity. Even with some electrical engineering background, It took much trial and error to create high-tech gadgets that surprise our guests. We spend a great amount of time finding the right furniture and decor to immerse our visitors. We’ve found that even with great puzzles,if you don’t put in as much care into everything else, it takes away from the experience.

Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about The Perfect Escape – what should we know?
With a myriad of escape room companies opening in the DFW Metroplex, we offer a higher-end, more premium experience than most. Everything is made from scratch and every detail involved from the moment visitors step thru our doors til the moment they step out, has been considered. When creating and designing our rooms, we asked ourselves, “What can an escape room be? How can we create something even more exciting?” With the answers to the questions, comes the basis of The Perfect Escape. We first allocated extra space to allow multiple rooms for each experience, whereas most companies may only offer a single room for entirety of the hour. Many companies will rely solely on low-tech gadgets and puzzles, with a plethora of combination locks and keys. We have cleverly blended many custom, high-tech gadgets and puzzles into our rooms to create an immersive and unpredictable environment with wonderful reactions from our visitors. Our rooms are completely decorated from top to bottom, and fully invested, so that the moment our visitors step into our rooms, they forget the fact that they’re in an office/retail building. We create rooms we would’ve love to find and do ourselves, rather than what’s the easiest and quickest thing we can get up. As avid escape room enthusiasts, our love and passion can be seen in our rooms. We’re ecstatic about providing a high level quality rooms to fellow players, inspiring new enthusiasts, and seeing our ideas and creative dreams come to life.

Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
Tri, Anna, and Thien Nguyen. Between the three of us co-owners, we plan, research, and execute everything. We’re each others mentors, supporters, and cheerleaders. We talk everyday with each other, if one learns something new, the other two will soon learn as well. Our roles bleed into each others often. However, decor and finances are usually in Anna’s court, whereas engineering, development, and building are usually in Thien and mine. Another major asset to our company is Maya Nguyen. She is an integral part in social media, as well as much of daily operations.

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