JORDAN RENDA
The Otherworldly Dreamer
Having built a successful haunted house business in his teens, Jordan Renda found himself at the forefront of the escape room craze in 2015. His desire to create something even more engaging and immersive eventually led him to the ultimate haunted house/escape room — an abandoned strip mall in Columbus, Ohio (still scary even with his background). It was the perfect location for Otherworld, a hybrid, Renda says, of a high-tech museum and immersive theater. Visitors are transported to, well, another world via a sprawling melange of artwork, holograms, holodecks and other mixed-reality effects. Renda and his team recently partnered with Thirteenth Floor Entertainment Group to open a second massive location in Philadelphia this August. And keep your ears open for more expansions in other abandoned malls that lead to an alternative dimension.
Projects
Jordan’s aim with the 32,000-square-foot Otherworld in Columbus, Ohio? To immerse guests in such fantastical images and effects that they forget all about their smartphones. Mission accomplished! Well, except for the selfies enthusiastic visitors snap around the immersive museum’s 45 rooms filled with fuzzy creatures to climb over, 190,000-plus LED lights that respond to movement, mixed-reality playgrounds, secret passageways and more. While there’s a slight narrative thread throughout each visit, guests are encouraged to simply let themselves — and their imaginations — roam free. In the brand-new Otherworld Philadelphia, hidden LiDAR sensors and other tech features up the ante, allowing visitors to actively change the mind-blowing scenery and effects just by their movements on the multilevel structures. Jordan’s first project was Night Terrors Haunted House, which he opened as a teen in Jacksonville, FL, after discovering there were no haunted houses in the area to celebrate Halloween.
