Escape Hunt Watford: Escape The Wild West

Where to begin…. I was so disappointed with this room/experience. To be fair the host was trying to manage a number of rooms all at once due to staff shortages and this did show. 

The game started late. 

The noise from outside the room from the reception/bar area was a bit off putting. 

A number of the puzzles were not in keeping with the theme and required psychic ability to work out how to make a couple of ‘now completed’ puzzles work. 

Some puzzles are still in the room even though they are no longer part of the game and don’t work. 

The door into the second room did not open with the key unless you turned the key to a particular point of the lock. 

Two padlocks had been accidentally swapped when the game had been reset and consequently as the padlock code clue was heavily reliant on the item it was attached to plenty of time was wasted trying to open them. 

The room is very tired with a number of broken parts. 

I wouldn’t recommend. Even though we successfully escaped, we came out feeling unfulfilled and deflated. 

There was some great ideas and clever moments throughout this room but most lacked signposting. Disappointing to see some props that used to be used still in the room. 

Friendly host, in character hints/voice over.

Some props were a bit broken but overall a good experience. 

Multiple paths and options of how to finish rather than the standard linear so less standing around with larger groups.

The host was lovely but the game was very bad. We paid £99 for the experience and it only took half an hour, we were not trying to be quick. A few ‘misdirects’ (puzzles with no solution to throw you off). Too many padlocks requiring 4 digit codes, not enough variety. The host had to activate some releases, including one where we just had to tell the host the answer to a riddle, which didn’t really work narratively. When boxes released there was no springing open/other indication of the door being released- you  had to pull on the door (which we didn’t try too hard as we didn’t want to use undue force). The puzzles weren’t satisfying to complete. The final puzzle required coal collected from previous puzzles throughout the room but there was seemingly no mechanical purpose for it so it wasn’t a satisfying conclusion. We didn’t even need to use all the coal collected. Overall we were really disappointed and feel very ripped off. We bought it for a birthday event and it provided 30 mins entertainment. We’ve done quite a few escape rooms before but we’re not very good at them, we usually take the full hour. 

A completely cynical cash grab with clearly no desire to design a fun or challenging escape room. Would not recommend. 

We had a few mishaps with the room with a puzzle not reset and elements that once complete weren't activating. The theme and set are good but didn't transition that well between rooms. Not a room I would recommend

This was so fun! We took the Mother/Mother-in-law to do this one and she had such a good time! Great hosting too 🙂 Would recommend!