May 17, 2017

Meet Bruce Chang and Darcy Doorn of 11th Hour Escape in Plano

Local Stories

Today we’d like to introduce you to Bruce Chang and Darcy Doorn.

Bruce Chang and, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
Darcy: We did an escape room for fun with my family back in 2015. My mom is very entrepreneurial and almost immediately said “We have to open one!” Bruce and I are serial entrepreneurs ourselves and together we decided to go for it. Now we have three locations across Texas- one here in Dallas area (Plano), one in Austin, and one in Corpus Christi.

Bruce: In an escape room, it is best to have a diverse group of brains working together. And we discovered that to be true for business as well. I am good at finding ways to reduce risk, Darcy is good at maximizing profit, Pauline (my mother-in-law) loves putting the game experience together and Cap (my father-in-law) is a master at building the set design. We each have our own strengths to bring the table.

Has it been a smooth road?
Darcy: It is NOT been a smooth road. First, we changed business models; we were going to do a mobile escape room, then decided to go with the more-traditional fixed location. While this was going on, we also learned a hard lesson about mixing business with friendship. Any relationship mixed with business is hard, really… even with family.

Bruce: After that, we also had some disagreements about which city with which to start. And then when our Plano location finally did get up and running, we realized we needed to make some modifications to satisfy the city. It’s been a rollercoaster.

We’d love to hear more about your business.
Bruce: We are known as the first escape room to offer a choice of difficulty level so all of our guests can have a great experience, whether they are experts or newbies.

Darcy: We also took note of some things we wanted to be sure to leave out of our escape game: red herrings, counting clues, math equations, puzzles that don’t fit the theme, high-failure tech, unreasonable puzzles, poor story-to-gameplay connection, and boring atmosphere. You can be confident that with us, you will feel like you are on a pirate ship, or in a fallout shelter… immersed in the theme.

Is our city a good place to do what you do?
Bruce: Over the last year, the market has become very saturated with escape rooms. But for most new ventures, I think Plano would be a great place to start if you’ve got a quality product or service to offer.

Darcy: Overall, the city has been accommodating to us as entrepreneurs. All three of our businesses are at home in Plano.

Contact Info: