Daily Inspiration: Meet Jessy & Zack Ford

Today, we’d like to introduce you to Jessy & Zack Ford.

Jessy & Zack, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?

My husband and I lived in Florida. I was an elementary school teacher, and my husband was a project manager. We have two children: a son, Zachary, who is 16 years old, and a daughter,Vanessa, who is 19 years old. We love to host murder mystery dinner parties and board game gatherings. We started playing escape rooms together as a family, and it became something we loved.

Last year, I was diagnosed with cancer and was forced to take a medical leave of absence. After realizing that we are not promised tomorrow, we decided to take a chance and venture into business for ourselves and open an escape room business. We were born in the ’80s and grew up in the ’90s and thought we would like to share those great memories with everyone, so we picked Radical Escape Rooms as our business name, and our lobby has toys and things from the ’80s and ’90s.

The lobby even looks like the Diner from Saved By The Bell. We love working together as a family and doing what we love. Escape rooms are adventures filled with exciting themes that bring family and friends together to create memories. We just love bringing people together to have a great time.

Alright, let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall, and if not, what challenges have you had to overcome?
Building the props and designing the rooms were the easy part. Finding the right location and passing inspections were the challenge. With escape rooms being a new industry, there isn’t a clear guide to what an escape room business needs to have to open for business.

Being new business owners, we had to learn as we went along, and there were a lot of setbacks because guidelines are different from city to city. We worked side by side with the city, and with lots of research and back and forth, we were able to open for business 6 months after starting our venture.

Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
My family and I have played over 100 escape rooms nationwide. When we travel, we try to play in an escape roomwhereever we are. We also love to play strategy games like risk and retro board games. Our love for puzzles and riddles gives us an advantage when creating the games. We take the thing we love about escape rooms and incorporate it into our rooms.

Being a consumer gives an idea of what people will like when they are playing in an escape room. We want people to be IMMERSED in the adventure and be able to EXPLORE the puzzles, CONQUER the riddles, and escape the room. That’s why we give unlimited clues so anyone, whether they are new to escape rooms or an expert, can play our rooms. We want you to have fun and have a great experience.

We’d love to hear about any fond memories you have from growing up.
Spending quality time with my family is a favorite childhood memory.

We have always made sure to create memories as a family with our children. We want them to look back and have the same childhood memories of spending quality time as a family playing games and going on trips.

 

Pricing:

• Immunity Quest (60 min) $30 per person
• Secrets of the Pharaoh (60 min) $30 per person
• Exit Protocol (90 min) – $45 per person

Contact Info:

• Website: Radicalescaperooms.com
• Instagram: Instagram.com/radicalescaperooms
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61550295779461