10/12/2026
THANK YOU, BELLEVILLE — AND AN HONEST APOLOGY 🌶️🔐
This weekend was Chili Cook-Off weekend, with 50,000 people downtown and what felt like half of them walking through our doors. On a normal event weekend we'd have 4–5 staff running rooms and greeting groups outside. This weekend we had staff out sick and staff out of town. I was the only fully trained person in the building.
But I wasn't alone.
While I was running multiple rooms at once, Mharestel held our front door. She had zero training. She pulled up the FAQ on our new website, learned every room description on the fly, and answered group after group after group.
Then there's Serenity, our newest hire. She had two days of training under her belt, and on day three she was teaching Mharestel how to reset rooms. By the end of Saturday she was nearly running her own room solo. Those two didn't miss a beat all weekend.
Now the apology. To everyone who walked in and waited, and to every group who played: you didn't get our A-game. I was running three rooms, resetting, and jumping out to the lobby, so I couldn't give each game the full attention it deserves. We made mistakes, and you were incredibly patient with us.
Somehow you still left us three 5-star Google reviews plus a stack of Square and Bookeo reviews. Honestly, we didn't earn every one of those stars this weekend, and that makes us even more grateful. If your visit wasn't what it should have been, please message us. We want to make it right.
And to Mharestel and Serenity: you were baptized by fire and came out the other side on your feet. I can't thank you enough. ❤️
📸 The photo on this post came from one of the groups who played during this weekend's madhouse. When I found it, in the middle of all that chaos, it meant the world to me. To the Jail Cell who left this, thank you. You have no idea how much we needed it.
Thank you, Belleville. Come back soon, and we'll show you what a normal weekend looks like.
— Tyler & the Escape 618 Team
