Escape Time Burton-upon-Trent: Freak Show Circus

Awful room, everything was labelled do not touch which made it difficult to find direction in the room. Padlocks were left unlocked which made things confusing and mundane, GMs also had no idea what they were doing and had to ask each other how to give us clues for everything. 

Branded as a live actor horror room with no live actor. 

Before even entering the game we were told “are you sure you want to play this game, you probably won’t escape, choose a different game/easier game”. This game was my 50th escape room so I thought that was a very weird and rude thing to say. Nonetheless we chose to stick with the game we booked.

A very cheap set up, something a group of school children would be able to put together. 

Very dark in the room, with only one red light. After a few minutes I found a torch, but it was out of battery. I asked “please can I have a new torch, this ones out of battery” I had a reply “the freaks have hidden it”. We search for a new torch which we were under the impression was hidden in the game but no luck. 

We continue in the dark with no torch. 

The room is filled with 4 digit number padlocks. No words, no 3 digits, no directionals, JUST 4 digit padlocks. That’s fine, but please put some signposting in the game!! Every time we had a code we were trying it on multiple different locks which was boring and time wasting.

Some puzzles involved needing the use of colours which is incredibly difficult in a dark red room. You can’t see the difference between blue, green, purple and black when everything is red! This didn’t make the game ‘hard’ it made it utterly annoying and impossible - especially without the torch we were meant to have! 

Two members of our group spent a good 5-10 mins solving a puzzle which was already open when we got into the room. I don’t mind if somethings broken but they could’ve at least told us to STOP trying to do the puzzle over and over. 

There were multiple occasions where we asked for help and we were ignored. They said at the start ‘if the clue isn’t on our sheet then we can’t help you’ like, what on earth? We also completed a puzzle but nothing happened, few mins later they ask if we’ve done it, and then we reply yes. They say, hold hands and dance! Then a mag pops open. Covering up the fact they just didn’t open something when they were meant to.

In the end we failed, and when shown the rest of the room we had only 1 padlock left to unlock before we would’ve completed it. I didn’t mind failing at the time because we were all pretty frustrated by the whole thing and just wanted to get out. But we would’ve been able to escape if we weren’t looking for a torch for ages, playing in pitch black and wasting our time doing puzzles that were already unlocked.