Prison IslandPrison Island BelfastEscape roomIRLBilling itself as “better than an escape room” this set of challenge rooms in Belfast always seems busy. This is my second visit, the first being about 3 years ago IIRC. The theming and room quality is great and very strong, but I must say, the vast majority of the rooms aren’t winners and some are either broken (I mean, they have poor design, not physically broken) or totally inscrutable. This time I missed the best rooms- which combine crawling through tight spaces with climbing and light puzzle solving- because the spaces scared the little kids in my group! With the addition of 6 new rooms, but honestly they don’t add anything new and 60 minutes was probably too long. Kids will really love this I think.
The ExorcismFunstation BelfastEscape roomIRLThis was a birthday treat and a rare chance for me to experience a room with a team of 4. This is quite a new room in the oddyssey arena in Belfast- well located and well kept. I’m dubious about things with an explicit religious horror theme in general, expecting a lot of loud noises and edgy stuff. That is present here in spades. We got a very general intro to the room and a few hints. We were warned about the low level light in the room, which - although initially atmosphere inducing- made it super hard to see. The props were amazing quality and detailed, along with the sets. The automated hint system as well was incredible- there’s a narrator who sets the stage, and if you press a hint button, gives appropriate guidance in character that doesn’t spoil the solution. The problem with this is, often the team talked over it, and or environment stuff played over it, so I missed both hints and story. Some of the puzzles were of the “too obscure” variety that I couldn’t have worked out without the hints. The narrative itself, though a bit derivative , tells a definite story and draws you in. This ends the (mild) spoiler free : content warning free section! I would also urge anyone who is upset by being shocked to avoid this room (details in the spoiler section below). No thematic concerns if you can tolerate “the conjuring” style supernatural horror. There’s some seriously impressive tech integration in the room too. We did manage to cheese (brute force or solve by accident) some of the obscure critical puzzles too. We beat the whole thing with 25 minutes to go, which was a bit disappointing to be honest, more because the noise had made it really confusing, and that I didn’t immediately understand why we’d passed some of the puzzles. ———— Content advisory / mild spoiler: The one thing that really missed the mark for me is, there’s an extremely loud noise maker in the room, that appeared to go off randomly which absolutely scared the wits out of me, to the point where I could barely concentrate and found some parts beyond confusing and irritating. We were told at the end that the host was manually triggering this in order to amuse himself (and who knows, maybe put on tiktok, not a great thought to pay that much for per person and potentially end up an internet laughing stock). The noise was that intense that it could easily upset and over scare you.
Houdini's WorkshopEscapade HQ Escape RoomsEscape roomIRLA good solid escape room with strong Houdini theming and atmosphere- no scares or horror. The puzzles are satisfying but not too hard, some cool environmental effects. The hint system and intercom worked fine and the staff were attentive to our calls. The only disappointment was no fanfare for escaping, the door just pops open! Some of the other rooms here make a little more effort at that stage, but otherwise, I find the Dundonald eacape rooms consistent and solid, and decent value (about £25 per person and the rooms take an hour).
Jester HourEscapade HQ Escape RoomsEscape roomIRLA fairly straightforward room with a light horror theme. At time of writing (September 2024) the intercom was broken so for hints, we had to wave at the camera for attention. All in all not bad but not stellar - I recommend the prison break room over this one. As other reviews have mentioned, there is a very irritating “skill game” section in this that we had to get staff to help us with - also it makes irritating noises. Only a few of the puzzles were of the extremely obscure “wouldn’t have worked it out” variety. We escaped with 3 seconds to go and the very helpful staff told us this is one of their hardest rooms.
