Today we’d like to introduce you to Taylor Wheaton.
Hi Taylor, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
My wife and I discovered escape rooms when we first started dating, while I was still in the Air Force. She co-owned a business with her sister at the time down in Raleigh, NC, near where I was stationed. Her business was featured alongside several other businesses for a local news thing. One of those other businesses was an escape room. We had to check it out. We played there and became friends with the owner. We then played tons of escape rooms together wherever we went. By the time I left the military, we had played over 100 escape rooms. We had just married and were moving up to MA to be close to family and decided to start our own escape room business. My wife, Sheryl, is our business genius. She makes sure everything runs as it should. We literally wouldn’t make a paycheck if it wasn’t for her. I get to be the creative. I design, build and maintain all of our escape rooms. Every new game I design is an opportunity to learn new skills on the fly. I’ve developed quite the skill set at this point and can confidently say I’m a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. I’m exceptionally OK at a lot of things. Our most recent game The Mole of the Mountain won multiple awards and was recognized by TERPECA voters as the 75th best escape room in the world for 2025, making us ranked the 8th best in the US.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Nothing about our journey has been smooth. We originally opened in Taunton, MA, which was a terrible location for an escape room. We struggled and were just starting to break even, and then COVID hit. It was a death knell to our Taunton location. Sheryl is clever though and always finds way to turn bad situations to our advantage. She saw an opportunity to purchase an escape room location in Mashpee, right on Cape Cod. It was a phenomenal location with rooms that were in rough shape. We purchased it at a discounted price since the confidence in a luxury entertainment business was fairly low at the time. We were debt free after experiencing our first fully opened summer at the location. I worked tirelessly switching over or fixing up the existing games so that we could have games we were proud of. After a year and a half of hard work, we finally switched the branding back over to our own, Upside Down Escape Games. All the games there now fully feel like ours. The move to Mashpee was terrifying, but the gamble paid off.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
I had a very unique Air Force career. I joined as a Chinese Linguist. I spent my first two years in the Air Force studying Mandarin at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey, CA. I graduated from the Chinese Basic course and before I would go to Texas for my Crypto training, I needed to take a special test called the Defense Language Proficiency Test (DLPT). Well, as it happens, just before mine and a few other classes were set to take the test, the test was compromised. A professor from another class got their hands on the testing materials and begun secretly sharing it with their students. They were discovered and lots of people got in trouble, serious trouble and the DLPT we were supposed to take had to be discarded. These tests normally take 2 years to produce. The test we took was developed in 3 months. The pass rate for graduates went from 85% to 45%. I just barely failed the listening portion and was subsequently reclassed into Aircraft Maintenance as an F-15 crew chief. It was a major culture shock going from this prestigious intel community to the flightline. It was humbling and challenging in ways I wasn’t used to. However, it was the best thing that ever happened to me. I discovered a passion for working with my hands. I especially loved when there were issues on the aircraft that others found difficult to identify. I relish figuring things out. This translated into the perfect mindset for escape room design. Now every escape room I design presents me with something I’ve never done before. When people ask me what I do for a living, I tell them I’m a professional figure-it-outer.
So, before we go, how can our readers or others connect or collaborate with you? How can they support you?
I love working with other skilled artists or builders. If someone can show me something new or a new way of doing something, I want to work with them! Otherwise, come play our games! Leave reviews! Especially on Morty. And if you’ve played over 100 escape rooms, register on TERPECA as a voter. Good reviews are something all escape room designers should have to earn and it keeps people like me motivated to keep pushing for cooler experiences.
Contact Info:
- Website: info@upsidedownescapes.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/upsidedownescapes/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/upsidedownescapes
