Houdini’s Escape Room Experience Cheshire Oaks: Escape From Alcatraz

"Would you like me to be nice, sarcastic or horrible?" The perfect start to our game!

We had the BEST host and he made us jump, scream and laugh, sometimes all at once.

The puzzles were smart and well thought out.

The Prices Are Criminal

I came with friends as a group of 6 to Escape from Alcatraz. The instructional video at the start of the game went on far too long and basically repeated everything our host told us. Speech in the next video introducing the story was too quiet to hear.

Story

Escape your cell in Alcatraz before you’re taken to the electric chair.

Puzzles

Some of the puzzles and their solutions were far too tenuously linked: there was one in particular where I was just like…well how on earth would you know how to do [that] with [that]. None of them were particularly innovative, either. Our host, Claudia, was lively, invested in our experience and offered hints in the best way. Whenever we asked for one, questions like “Do you want to know what to do with X” or “Would you like a riddle?” were posed to us, so our team could choose how much or little assistance to receive.

Mise-en-scene

Sure, Escape from Alcatraz is a solid (but generic-themed) break-out-of-jail escape room, but £25 per person- a price that doesn’t change whether your group is a 2 or a 6- is unjustifiable. Take a good luck at the discount page before paying, as there’s lots. We got money off with Blue Light Card, but it was still £21.25 per person.

Final Comments

I may be giving a harsh critique here, but my point is that, for a room priced at £150 per play, jaws should drop, and minds should be blown. While this didn’t happen, we still had a fun time.

I don't really like leaving bad reviews, but it has to be said.. This game was worst game we've every played and unfortunately was down to a combination of the hosting and mistakes. 

The actual game play itself was very generic and the theming was fine, but we couldn't enjoy or remember much of the game play because of how badly the game was hosted. 

Firstly the clues were given through a hatch in the initial room, and made it very awkward to come back for clues.  On top of this, once we had progressed  beyond the first room where the clues were given,  this room was then locked whilst we were wondering around... We were given a clue and naturally headed towards where clues are given.. we headed back to find the door firmly locked... not understanding, or thinking we had accidently closed the door.. we pressed the green button to open.. once opened we found the host resetting the first room and was very aggressively initially. Straight away this has ruined the game and everything basically went down hill from here. 

During the game, there is a typical wooden "electric chair"  Randomly our host came in and sat a member of party in the electric chair - Now bare in mind that is peak pandemic and distance and masks were important.  - They then fumbled and locked our party member in to the chair both hands and feet . Confused, we just thought this was part of the game and didn't question it.  Once they had finished we asked what the point was.. and their reply was "Its just a bit of fun.. Everyone really enjoys it"  - So this had nothing to do with the game at all and during the peak pandemic, our game was interrupted for no reason at all. 

Amongst the numerous issues, a final nail in the coffin was a prop clearly not reset in the room. We searched numerous times in the container, and the host told us it should be in there. Eventually our host entered the room and couldn't find it either... then left... then told us to check the container again. Magically the prop was now there. As experienced players, we couldn't have the wool pulled over our eyes, and this was really unforgiveable. 

Overall our game was completely ruined by our host and left a very sour taste in our mouth about returning to Houdini, which is sad as we'd heard amazing things about the brand. 

A final note - Maybe some GDPR training is required as our address was recognised by our host and even suggested we could give them a lift home as they didn't live far.  On top of everything we had experience made us feel physically sick. 

Please avoid this centre at all costs and spend your money somewhere else more deserving. 

the worst of houdini's escape rooms that we've done so far - the most glaring issue being that in the other rooms the host speaks to you via something in the story (an ai on the ship in space break, a parrot in the pirate ship for the pirate one etc.) which keeps you immersed even when engaging with the host. for this room there is no such system in place and you have to shout for the host who then physically runs into the room, completely taking away from the immersion aspect of the room.

the puzzles also felt fairly uninspired, a few really good ideas sprinkled in (which is why the rating isn't lower) but the room was predominately number/code locks which begins to be a drag after a while. the pacing of the room also feels off where you're given stuff pretty much immediately that isn't used until close to the end, 2 rooms later. while i can appreciate that there is going to be some misdirection in these rooms it's just frustrating when you've got maybe 4 numbered locks to open of varying lengths on the go at the same time and one of like 2 clues you immediately have is completely irrelevant for the next 30+ minutes.

one other issue we had was there's a moment where you've got to open something and it takes a decent amount of force as it seemed to be held shut by a magnet but the host specifies "no excessive force needed" so we assumed it was just closed and needed to be triggered to be opened for probably half of our time in the room while it was supposed to be accessible the entire time. it's a small cabinet type door and it took considerably more force than full sized doors took to open so take from that what you will.

theme was okay, but again not really up to the standard of the other rooms. this also extended to the props which just felt lacklustre once again in comparison to the others.

overall it was a disappointing room as i could see some pieces of great ideas just completely let down by the other aspects of the room, which ultimately just led to a monotonous experience. the ending was also underwhelming and didn't really feel like an ending, caught us off guard that it was over. story and plot line similarly just felt disjointed. i'd recommend against doing this room unless they address these issues, and just go ahead with one of their better rooms as the difference in quality is like night and day.

We made an evening out of playing two games at Houdini's Swindon. Despite only having been open a few weeks a number of puzzles were broken or missing. Both rooms were disappointing

After having really enjoyed Titanic I had high hopes for this room, but unfortunately, it was an enormous let down.

It started off badly when the GM told us we 'didn't look experienced enough' to play this room (she said it had a 23% success rate), and laughed at us when we said we were still willing to give it a go. I've never encountered a GM like this before and we were all left feeling quite uncomfortable. 

The game itself was difficult purely because the puzzles were illogical. Once found, they were easy enough, but to actually locate what the puzzles were required huge leaps in logic. It just became a guessing game. The room was also relatively plain, and the design got worse as the game progressed. One section was a plain white room with about 5 props in- I've never seen an escape room so sparse. 

We were clued through a hatch in the door, which was a fun idea, but our GM was talking to her colleagues while we waited for her to clue us. This totally broke any sense of immersion, and we almost considered leaving. 

We did eventually escape, though the final puzzle was broken so this was revealed by the GM coming in at the end to tell us that we'd completed the room.

I would absolutely not recommend, there are much better options elsewhere. 

You could tell they were understaffed, we would complete a puzzle and nothing would trigger - we would ask for a hint and the GM would ask “have you done this?” And we had, so he would say “2 minutes” and THEN it would trigger. Really disrupted the game play

Host just kept walking into the room and standing there. Felt a little bit patronising. Abit weird. First room was great head high expectations. Some red flags to waste time. I like to be able to guess a clue and still be able to open it. With this game they won't allow that. It's all manually triggered. The last clue wasn't even in the room. It was thrown in. The game was completely controlled by the games master

Didn't active puzzles when they had been completed, felt as if host wasn't watching the game

Newly opened but lots of puzzles damaged, GM had to come in to the room to correct a few things and bring missing items/fix broken items

The room design was great and the starting puzzles made sense.

After the first part is over the puzzles become random so they didn’t follow on logically and it was just a case of open as much as you can quickly. 

Our games master was terrible, he was rude to us despite telling us “you must ask for help if you need it in this room”.

Because there is no intercom system it breaks the atmosphere every time you do ask for help and the host has to come in and check if props work or if you’ve done something right.

Again when asking for help our games master did not communicate well, he spent at least two minutes staring at us like we were idiots, and then at certain stages began opening the door, wondering in, and taking items from us when they didn’t work. He started unlocking items himself without explanation, and even began throwing props we would need into the room at us.

We were only two puzzles away from escaping in the end but I wasn’t convinced by the time keeping as the watch is set showed we still had five minutes. I think the games master was having a bad day and ended up taking it out on us. Really made us feel like fools and treated us poorly.

We booked 3 Houdini's rooms for one day and gosh was it disappointing! 

The second worst escape room (out of 88 so far) we have ever done (second only to the Titanic room at Houdini's).

This room has been open for a month and a half and already half the puzzles were completely broken. It was very frustrating - we would complete the puzzle, it wouldn't work, so we would go off and try something else thinking we didn't have everything for the puzzle yet and the 5 minutes later the GM would appear to tell us it was broken. There was also a hole in the wall which we rummaged around in (pulling out insulation and a loose screw) only to be told once we had finished the room that it wasnt part of the room and that someone had damaged the wall the week previous and they hadn't been able to fix it yet. Why on earth wouldn't they tell us before we went into the room?

The end to the room was so anti-climatic we didn't even realise we had completed the room until the GM appeared (for the 9th time in the game) and told us it was over. 

And be warned - the clue system for Houdini games (at least in the Swindon branch) is the GM just appearing in the room to give you hints. It's very disconcerting and completely ruins the immersion. 

We'll never do a Houdini's room again!

We returned to this venue after a fantastic experience a few days earlier with their other room, Titanic. We also really enjoyed Alcatraz!

Once again, the theming was on point! This is, in my view, what this venue does incredibly well; that, and the fantastic staff. Once again, we had Leon as our GM, and we were really happy to see him - he’s a credit to the company.

The room is logical and flows well, and we enjoyed the good variety of puzzles. Some were a bit more familiar than others, and no one puzzle stood out as being especially creative or unusual, but they were still all pleasing and satisfying to solve. We were offered the choice of doing the room “in the dark” or with lights on, and we chose the former (in spite of my reservations about poor eyesight - I was kindly told I was allowed to use a torch!). We were glad we did as I think the atmosphere would not have been as apt with them on. 

There were two puzzle solutions - one in particular - that were very challenging to find, and that was my only gripe, as it became a little frustrating and meant we needed a couple of clues, which we like to try and avoid. That said, they were a fun reveal when we realised what we’d been missing! 

So far there are only two rooms at this venue, but we hope that there will be more to come, and we will definitely be back if that’s the case. Thanks, Houdini’s!

Amazing host, gave option of immersion level, would highly recommend full immersion, makes the clues a little more cryptic.

Room was well decorated, puzzles were logical and had plenty going on for the size of us and maybe larger groups.

Great idea well presented. Great props. Good hosting. Some illogical puzzles and host controlled elements made it slightly frustrating 

Another excellent room from Houdinis.  Followed by pizza on a Sunday morning.  Enjoyable

A mediocre game made worse through the addition of extremely difficult searching requirements. 

Good fun room, but cant help but think we were delayed on some of the puzzles by the GM laying it on a bit thick regarding your "cellmate" in the briefing. Maybe we took this bit a little too literally... lesson learnt! Phone torches were needed as the mini ones provided are crap.

I actually thought this was better than Titanic. The puzzles are clever and flow with the rooms and transitions. A more difficult game than Titanic which makes it more satisfying to complete. 

Good room, good set, needed a couple of clues and one particular puzzle was worn out so we could see which "buttons/keys" needed to be pressed. Host said no one has ever noticed that so perhaps we are just eagle eyed.  We also skipped a whole puzzle without realising and still completed the room. 

A fun room, though it has a few hidden items that we missed on searching - it seemed like these were deliberately sneaky. The puzzles were solid and pretty clear, though I think we needed a few hints.

The GM was really full on which split our team - you'll either love her or loathe her. 

A fun room, but we had a couple of inventory issues (after repeated crashing it opened into an area we hadn't got to yet), and a GM who was so into his character, and his well rehearsed quips, that instructions had to be repeated several times to before he heard.

The room was well built and had some clever puzzles in that fitted the theme. There were a couple of extremely sneaky ones that I can't imagine how we were meant to have just come across them. 

Our gamesmaster was a fantastic actor and set the mood well at the start. However during the game his hints and help, when asked for, were really awful - so unhelpful that it felt like he was trying to frustrate us rather than help us. Really wished that rather than speaking in nonsensical riddles, he instead gave us simple and clear hints.

The main issue we had with the game was it was during a 30C heatwave and there's no real air circulation or ventilation in these basement rooms. It was so unbearably hot and sweaty that we struggled to stay focussed on the game - and at one point I gave up and just sat in front of one of the desk fans to cool off for a few minutes.

Despite these issues, we enjoyed the room much like the other excellent rooms at Houdinis for its ingenuity and theme.