by The Escaporium Halifax (website)
Ground Floor, Berwick St Mills, 23 Square Rd, HX1 1QG
2-8 players
Languages: EN
60 minutes
🐶Well known alien hunter and conspiracy theorist, Professor Ross Well lives at 51½ George Street. After years spent collecting, and hunting evidence of extra-terrestrial life, he got his lucky break and came across a crash site up on the moors, complete with a live alien! He brought the alien back to his house with the intention of keeping him, but the mothership has tracked their friend down and arrived to collect him!
You begin your mission outside Professor Ross Well's house - what you will find in there is anyone's guess! But what you do know is that you only have one hour to return the alien back to the mothership, or our planet will be destroyed!
Your excellent investigative observation skills will be put to the test in Area 51½!
Overall rating
based on ratings from 61 users
combined with 4 pro reviews
Your review
Player reviews
1 of the best escape rooms I have ever done currently out of 40+ rooms! Truly unmissable. The set design was fantastic, the props were like out of a movie. The puzzles were unique especially the stethoscope, eggs, and water level puzzle. The shiney room needs ypu to work separately to make it in the time we didn't escape in time but still a fantastic room.
Reviews by escape room review sites
We already played four rooms of Escaporium in Halifax in April 2022 and were very excited about the latest adventure Area 51 1/2, which we had already heard a lot of good things about. A 208th place in Terpeca’s first year (second best newcomer from the UK) also bodes well for a great experience.
What’s it about?
Professor Ross Wells is a conspiracy theorist and alien hunter. It is suspected that he discovered and abducted an alien. We are now standing in front of his house at 51½ George Street and have little time to get to the bottom of the matter. The mother ship is already approaching Earth to search for the missing friend. Will we succeed in freeing the alien from the professor’s clutches?
Area 51 1/2 is actually a 60-minute room. However, if you play with two people, you get 75 minutes of game time due to the quantity of puzzles and their mainly parallel structure. Some tasks require teamwork and good communication. We needed almost the entire time because there is really a lot to do. Puzzle lovers will get their money’s worth here.
Overall, I loved Area 51.5. In fact, in my whole trip down to Yorkshire to visit Al, Ash & Tasha, this was my very favourite room I did – and I’d be surprised if it didn’t make a regular appearance on all the enthusiast lists in the future.
You are saving the world but the aliens aren’t malevolent and are actually quite endearing, in their own tentacle-ly way. There is a great injection of humour and, perhaps more importantly, a lovely sense of stargazing wonder about the whole mission.
Lists
[Last Update: January 2026] I’ve visited the United Kingdom several times and played a total of 173 escape games from 61 different providers. As always, I’ve asked also other enthusiasts and bloggers for their opinions. The final table combines the individual rankings of 63 enthusiasts ...