If you’ve never tried an Escape Room before, then I beg you to give it a go. I’ve done two now and I had so much fun doing them. This second time around was curtesy of Handmade Mysteries. They gifted me and my friends a complimentary experience of one of their many escape rooms that are in London and Brighton. This one was at The Hope Pub in Farringdon.
This was a gifted experience.
After getting our nails done together, we headed over to the pub. My girls were down for a weekend catch-up, something we try to organise every few months. Living at university together and then all going our seperate ways makes seeing each other difficult when we all live in different places. If we all lived close by, I have no doubt that we’d see each other several times a week. Arriving at the pub, we went up to the bar and said we were here for the escape room. We were told to wait in the pub and look out for a mysterious-looking chap named Gabriel who would take us to the room.
Now when it comes to immersive theatre, performers can either be really good or it can end up feeling really cheesy. Gabriel (below) was fantastic and joked back with us throughout the challenge. Unlike the previous escape room I did last, he featured throughout the room as there were two parts to the challenge and his area (where he likely watched us struggle) was in that space between the two room.
I couldn’t take any pictures of the room itself but I can explain a little about about the concept of the room. The challenge was to rescue the last bottle of wine in Lady Chastity’s Reserve. We were given the option of using flashlights, which we immediately put on because the room was fairly dark. There was a giant wardrobe at one end of the room, with mirrors on the front of it. Absolutely terrifying it was and I definitely thought at some point that something would appear in the glass. As the timer started, we collected the flashlights and found a book that would guide us through our journey. The first of which was to find the weak link in the chain. Now of course, the wardrobe had a thick link chain keeping it closed and so we found the weak link and took it apart.
All of the girls apart from me and Bennett – I call two of my friends by their surname – stood back. With Bennett directly behind me, I swung open the wardrobe doors ready to scream at whatever was in there. The rest of the game was highly entertaining and at times it got a little jumpy. However, we were all determined that we wanted to beat the clock. A few of the clues we struggled on and thankfully we have a life lines that we could use with Gabriel to get one or two clues. However, when were were on the last stage of the game, we got stumped. With the clock ticking down, we were running out of time. Did we make it?!
OF COURSE WE DID.
With literally FOUR minutes to spare, we completed the last part of the puzzle and won the all-important bottle of wine. We got to take this home, had our picture taken and the photo later appeared on the company page, which can be seen here.
The whole experience was so much fun and a great activity to do with my friends on a girls weekend. I highly recommend it. The only thing I would say was the wine itself wasn’t fantastic. I later indulged in the bottle on my own but ended up only having the one glass. I’m probably a bit of a wine snob though, so each to their own!
Thanks Handmade Mysteries for such a great opportunity! Have you ever done an escape room before? Let me know in the comments below.
*Disclaimer – This escape room event was gifted to me and my friends in return for an honest review. All words are my own.
