Alle-Kiski Valley escape rooms
Escape room Pittsburgh mills
Location: Galleria at Pittsburgh Mills, Neighborhood 3, storefront 356
Hours: Open Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Cost: $25 per person Fridays and Saturdays, $20 Sundays
Website: escaperoompittsburghmills.com
Enter the imaginarium
Location: 32 Alpha Drive West, Harmar
Hours: Wednesday-Sunday, evenings; weekends
Cost: $29.99 per person
Website: entertheimaginariumpgh.com
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Updated 2 hours ago
As business partners, Scott Leah cheers for success, while Joe Lukas pulls for failure.
Most of the time, Lukas gets his way.
Leah of Arnold and Lukas of Lower Burrell together run Escape Room Pittsburgh Mills at the Pittsburgh Mills mall in Frazer.
It's one of two examples in the Alle-Kiski Valley of a national trend. The other, Enter the Imaginarium, is in Harmar.
An escape room is a game where a group of people are locked inside a room. They have to solve a series of puzzles within a certain amount of time to get out.
“We all like to go to movies,” Leah said. “You're a passive observer. Here, it's up to you to be the hero and save the day.”
Since opening in November, only about a third of those taking on Leah and Lukas' games have gotten out in the 50- or 60-minute time limit.
While Leah likes seeing people win, Lukas says, “I like seeing them lose.”
Escape rooms are said to have come to America from Japan in 2012, and into the Pittsburgh area in fall 2014.
Leah and Lukas, both 47, got the idea for opening one from an episode of “The Big Bang Theory,” in which the show's characters visited an escape room — and got out entirely too quickly because of their intellect.
After finding other escape rooms were already operating in Pittsburgh, they figured they missed their opportunity here and took their business to Erie, where they ran it from October 2015 to until last July before selling it and coming back closer to home. What they realized was that the market in the Pittsburgh area wasn't saturated — it was hungry for more, with people looking for new rooms.
They have two rooms — “Abducted,” which starts with participants being blindfolded, handcuffed and chained to a wall, and “Area 412,” a play on Area 51 with an alien theme.
“When they figure things out, it's like an endorphin rush,” Leah said. “It feels good.”
In Erie, the escape room was popular for corporate team building, a part of the business Leah and Lukas hope to grow here.
“It's an opportunity for a corporation to bring a team outside of the office into a different environment, a fun environment, where they have to work together, think together and communicate to work through problems and issues,” Leah said.
Jay Lombardo, owner of Avis car rental in New Kensington, took his employees to the escape room in December. They got to the last part of Area 412, but didn't get out.
“It keeps us all together. We try to do a lot of things after work together. Everybody has been here for a long time and we enjoy each other's company,” he said. “Every day we come up against something we have to work on as a team together.”
In Harmar, “Enter the Imaginarium” opened in a former nightclub last September. Working with the Bricolage theater company, it's billed as a “fully immersive” experience. It features two rooms, and they hope to add a couple more this year, said Rod Schwartz, a creator and owner.
“You don't meet any employees when you walk into the building,” he said. “You're right into the story from the second you walk in until you leave.”
Schwartz said he wanted to do an escape room of his own after visiting one in Pittsburgh's Greenfield neighborhood.
“The escape room business as a whole has exploded in Pittsburgh,” he said. “There's a lot of great rooms in our city. It's really impressive to see what people are coming up with.”
Schwartz said they are also working on growing corporate team building.
“You're interacting as opposed to going to a sporting event where you're sitting together but not involved with each other,” he said.
In an escape room, “You really are creating teamwork. Businesses can learn more about their employees and how they work with each other.”
Leah and Lukas said they don't see Imaginarium as competition, and Schwartz said the same of them.
“Once you've done a room once, you've done it,” Schwartz said. “There's no reason to go back.”
“Tell everyone to do them all. They're all different,” Lukas said. “Do ours first, but do them all.”
Brian C. Rittmeyer is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-226-4701 or at brittmeyer@tribweb.com.
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