After a couple of isolated precedents across the world, a significant number of escape rooms first appeared in Budapest in early 2011. They soon became the top-ranked tourist attraction of the city. One of them was Pániq Szoba, opened in March 2012 by Balázs Koltai and managed by him and Balázs Ureczky. In order to turn the concept of Pániq Szoba into an international undertaking, several Hungarian entrepreneurs, including Ákos Gábossy, Patrik Horváth, Gábor Péteri and Patrik Strausz, partnered with the owners of Pániq Szoba to found PanIQ Escape Room in 2014. The company entered the U.S. market as PanIQ Entertainment with two themes in Hollywood. When the rooms turned out to be a success, they opened their second U.S. location in San Francisco with three rooms: The Prison, Psycho and Geek. In 2017, PanIQ Escape Room officially became the first international escape room franchise in the world. The company is still responsible for the project design of all the rooms. In February 2016, a family-oriented MagIQ Room was opened in Beverly Hills, with three themes: Secrets of Wizardry, Pirate’s Den and Curse of the Mummy. As of November 2019, PanIQ Escape Room has fourteen franchise escape room units in the U.S.: three in Los Angeles, two in San Francisco, two in Chicago, Phoenix, Washington, D.C., Miami, San Jose, Dallas, Houston, and New York City. Seven additional units are under construction: Atlanta, Las Vegas, Miami Beach, Atlantic City, Austin, Boston, and Hartford. As of November 2019, three units are currently operating in Europe: Budapest, Marseilles, and Stockholm. The original Pániq Szoba is still in operation, but they are no longer part of the franchise, along with an affiliate location in Sydney, Australia. As of November 2019, one unit has opened in Asia in Islamabad, Pakistan and another unit is currently under construction in Nassau, Bahamas. Recent expansion and development has been the result of a Series A venture capital investment from Hiventures in the amount of US$875,000 in August 2018. PanIQ Escape Room is a member of the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, International Franchise Professionals Group, and International Franchise Association.
Rooms
The general objective of participants in each room is the same: to find a way to get out before the time runs out. In the Geek Room in Silicon Valley, startup employees are physically trapped in a room, with one hour to solve the puzzles. In 2016, the Geek Room was updated to add more drama, with players having to avoid explosives laid by their coked up boss. The San Francisco location also includes "Prison" and "Psycho" rooms. The PanIQ Room in Hollywood Hills has two rooms, with military bunker and lunatic asylum themes. Other popular themes are The Wild West in Phoenix, The Mob in Chicago and The Perfect Crime in Washington D.C. Role players, game designers, electrical engineers, carpenters, physicists, chemists and magicians take part in the designing and manufacturing of the games. Experimentation which is needed to get out of the rooms promotes teamwork. Google, Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard and other Fortune 500 companies have used PanIQ rooms as a team building exercise.
