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Tally
This Page - Success: 8 Fail: 1
Cumulative - Success: 88 Fail: 22 Percent Success: 80%
Room 102 – Copenhagen – The Brain Game – The Ring – with friend Cece playing along and Game Master Agata – Success – 11/29/2019
We went to an Escape room at the Brain Game called The Ring based upon the movie of the same name. It was a horror movie with the plot being that if you watched a video that had like really random images and you did not solve the mystery, you would die within 7 days. In the video, a girl, Samara, with long black hair in front of her face in a nightdress would come out of a well and kill you. There was an actor in the room playing Samara. Rose and I were tickled pink and laughing and enjoying it, but Rose’s friend was horrified and stayed behind Rose clutching Rose with a death grip. Of course, the actor noticed and specifically picked on her, which made us laugh even more.
This was so well done and in addition to our game master Agata giving us hints, Samara did as well especially when we were total dopes. There actually was a well in this room with secret symbols in it. While I was trying to open it, I kept fumbling on the code (it was a type of Simple Simon game code) and Samara finally took my hand and placed it on the right spots. Luckily it was not a real well because I had to reach into it and grab out some stuff though it was pretty deep (arm's length).
One of the things I noticed was that rooms in Europe tend to be more creative and individually built as opposed to the American commercial production line creation. This room, though not as adrenaline inducing as Live Thriller Paris or the Amsterdam Catacombs, was a wonderful room and I would rank it right up there. I think the actor made all the difference in the world.
I asked for a pic of the actor, but of course they can’t do that, otherwise, it would take the surprise element away for others.
Room 103 – Locked In Edinburgh – The Distillery with Games Master Axel – success (barely) – 11/30/2019
This location, Summerhall, used to be a veterinarian’s hospital. Locked In Edinburgh repurposed it and made a very good room with lots of puzzles and a logic elimination puzzle (which I love).
Unfortunately, the story didn’t speak to me. It’s about a Gin organization (the good guys) that has its enemy a Vodka organization who is trying to destroy the Gin (or steal the secret) and the owner taking all the gin elsewhere to hide it. Plus there’s a mole in the organization, so we have to eliminate suspects.
Story is important. It has to immerse you so you really feel part of it. We felt pressure, but only due to the time constraints (which we never saw).
Locked In Edinburgh bills itself as the #1 Escape Room in Edinburgh and perhaps I fell for the hype versus looking at reviews. I no longer remember since I booked this several months ago.
Games Masters (as they are known here) are important and Axel was awesome, but really the immersion was missing. As it was, it was just a bunch of puzzles to solve in some cool settings.
I was NOT inspired, sad to say.
Room 104 – Locked in Edinburgh – The Cutting Room with Games Master Matt – failure – 11/30/2019
This was an entertaining room but it was their toughest room and we got 3/5’s done. To be fair, I was warned.
There were an awful lot of puzzles that could have been worked on simultaneously so more folks would have helped a lot.
It was kind of fun with basically the murderer is coming – back story, there is a killer on the loose who takes body parts – his name in the press is the Gatherer – and you have to find out who it is and also try to get the missing body parts back.
There was one point I thought the game would become immersive because we had to barricade the door with a bar. Having someone occasionally come over and bang on the door would have been fun but that never happened.
We did not finish the room – only retrieved 3 of 5 body parts. The Games Master said we did well because he had a team that didn’t even get to the second room, but it’s small consolation.
I would love to do this with a couple of our regular peeps like Nathan, Abi, Shelby and Jim. We might have nailed it.
Rooms 105, 106, and 107 at Escape Reality in Glasgow – with Game Masters Anisa, Fran, and Chris – Success 3 times – 12/1/2019
What an incredible group of Game Masters. They really made these games sparkle. It also helped that these rooms followed my basic tenets of great Escape Rooms (which I’m going to write up too, maybe even today).
We had to cancel Murder in Whitechapel because Rose had to sleep. Her illness is really hitting her hard though I do hope she’s reached the end of it soon. Even so, the Game Masters allowed us to play it anyway which made me so happy, because that was the room I really wanted to do.
First room we did was Misery based on the same premise of the Stephen King novel. We’re trapped in the Nurse’s house and have to try to get out while she is running errands, conveniently for an hour. This room was different than any others we have done because there were numbered clues that we had to scan with a pad. We could use this every 10 minutes but we also had the option to push a button for help, which we did an awful lot in this first room. The trick was to focus on the stuff around the number and solve it to get the next number and once we got that instead of aimlessly looking at stuff in the room (like me counting dolls heads and those dolls without heads), we proceeded quicker. Still, this was a tough room and had some cool tech.
The second room we did was Murder In Whitechapel. We had to identify Jack the Ripper, find his latest victim and escape before he came in on a rampage and made sushi out of us. Now if you saw us do this room, you would think we were professional Escape Room artists (which we definitely normally are not). We only used 2 clues and we got out in 35 minutes. It was great team work. Also, we figured out the methodology of using the numbers to focus on one task at a time.
The final room we did was Enigmista – it was loosely based on Saw. We were handcuffed to the walls but these weren’t the wimpy cuffs they use in the States. These were the real deal and man were they ever heavy. Again, different from all the handcuff ones in the States, the first thing is NOT the handcuff key. It was about 3 puzzles in. We used a lot of the clues and called the game master in a lot. I told him we were just having him get his exercise.
Overall, the story was pretty good, the puzzles were nice sequential and logical, though in Enigmista, we had to stretch a bit (to press the button to get the Game Master!)
Mainly though, I enjoyed the Game Masters who really care about their rooms, the customers and the experiences their customers have.
Room 108 – Secret Studio London – with Game Masters Cliff and Actor Alex – success – 12/3/2019
I was really looking forwards to this room and it didn’t disappoint. Based loosely on Psycho and the Birds, it was a fun room with lots of surprises and some jump scares.
Being a former Hitchcock fan, I really enjoyed this room.
The plot is that the film editor has gone crazy because he couldn’t understand why film and reality differed. Then he disappeared off the face of the earth. We are told that we have an hour before the authorities arrive and start taking over and we need to find out what happened.
In the room was a chalkboard that had some missing squares and other things filled in. We had to find “differences” between the real reality and the film reality which meant looking at films and comparing them to actual things in the room and noting the difference on the board. This gave us the solution to the next room which was a bathroom with a tub containing a corpse (represented by a dummy). There was blood on the walls and the shower curtain was torn off, just like in Psycho.
After solving several more puzzles, we got to the next room which was a darkroom. We had to develop a REAL photo (closing the darkroom door) which gave us the final evidence we needed to adjust things back to normal. As we opened the door, the corpse in the bath moved and the original editor jumped out thanking us for helping him back to reality. It was a HUGE jump scare!
Such a good room and so well done.
Room 109 – London - Enigma Escape - The Killer with Games Master Hon
Success – 12/4/2019
This was an extremely unique room since the puzzles were custom built by 2 cousins. They were really awesome and creative. We got a lot of help but we did succeed.
The first room was basically a cage and we had to get into the next room. There was a pair of poles and we used them to hook things on the other side and pull them towards us. In the trash can was a waded up piece of paper which gave us a clue which items to get.
Luckily, hints were unlimited and we asked for a lot of them. One of the first puzzles was to figure out what was written on the wall which was all about Kyle and Alex (or another name, can’t remember exactly). Kyle was the killer apparently and had dismember bodies (which we found in the third room in large quantities). Some of the tech that was used was extremely unique and it was a really good room.
The only thing was that the story seemed a little weak why exactly we were there, but it was entertaining none-the-less.
Room 110 – Southhampton - Houdini’s Escape Room - Escape the RMS Titanic - with Games Master Amy – Success – 12/5/2019
Yes, we escaped the Titanic with 25 minutes to spare – it was a 90 minute room. We used 4 clues and saw a really fantastic effect of water flowing down the stairs just like in the 1996 movie. So cool.
This was such an awesome build. We started in our cabin with a view of the iceberg. There was a real funny here when Rose just plucked a cork out of a vase with her really long finger nails instead of us having to pour water into the vase. Hysterical! There was a key attached to the cork.
We opened a door through a crawl through passageway – luckily there was padding for my knees and I crawled along with Rose to the bridge. Right past the mail room, which was locked at the time (and in the real Titanic was first flooded, but only an aficionado would know that).
We had to solve a puzzle to get into the corridor and then another to get into the Marconi room. Rose sent a telegram at which point the lights started flickering and water started pouring down stairs (just like in the movie). It was tremendously exciting!
We had to get back to the mail room to get one of the final keys which we should have done earlier by setting the watertight bulkheads puzzle, but the order didn’t matter much here. It still worked and was still a lot of fun.
