by Houdini's Escape Room Experience Southampton (website)
Tenpin, Auckland Rd, SO15 0SD
2-6 players
Languages: EN
60 minutes
Overall rating
based on ratings from 27 users
combined with 13 pro reviews
Your review
Player reviews
I loved Poppa Plocks's Wonky Workshop, the room has some great puzzles. I like how you alway new where you were headed with an overall goal.
The puppets jokes were crewed and funny really added to the atmosphere as did the room being a bit dusty like an old toy shop should be.
Would recommend as this room always sticks in my mind. But after doing another houdini escape room some of the hosts need more training, we were lucky this time our host was great and dressed for the occasion!
Just a heads up to anyone thinking of playing Poppa Plocks's Wonky Workshop at Houdini's Southampton. We left feeling very disappointed with both the hosting and the quality of the room, multiple puzzles were broken and required GM intervention to navigate, when queried about this the response was an unsatisfactory 'hahah yeah that happens a lot'. Begs the question why not fix it?
The general layout of the room felt very 'stuff in a room', with the leftover wallpaper from the previous room that occupied the space left in, this is very unlike what I know of Houdini's normal standard with the likes of Titanic and Extinction.
I've tried very hard not to make this sound defamatory but more just a word of caution since the reviews documented are very strong and this led us to choose to do the room, however those reviews are almost exclusively leftover from when the room was at its original company in London, it seems the relocation to Houdini's hasn't been kind to it.
A very original room. Great games master. A couple of puzzles I don’t think we’d have got without a clue but good all the same.
The sound effects were way too much for us- we could barely hear ourselves think!!
We arrived 15 minutes before scheduled time as the email mentions, along with the if you're late you will lose game time. By our official game time our GM wasn't there and we saw a different GM apologise to a group that their GM hadn't turned up and a refund would be given (after they had been sat there almost an hour) this worried me. Our GM turned up 5 minutes past our start time. Flustered and doing the pre game talk out of breath. It kind of threw me, once in the room the room was immersive and the puzzles simple enough to solve but hard enough to miss first time. Alot of the puzzles were solvable with sound clues which was a little disappointing as you were always trying to listen and if you missed something you had to wait for the next sound clue. This should be a lower score but the in game live actor (the same GM who hadn't been great pre game) was amazing. I think her name was Vicky and you could see her transform in to the character required. She made me smile all the way through how well she transformed in to her character.
We struggled to really follow this game, some of the puzzles felt a little odd as was the theming and we were becoming lost, however our gamesmaster really went above and beyond and played his part brilliantly. He had us laughing with him all the way through and this game will be memorable to us because of the great hosting.
The gamesmaster deserves a lot of applause for their performance with this room, firstly staying in character from start to finish and an unexpected but brilliant twist at the end! We were greeted in the pub by our wind up doll gamesmaster and taken to the games workshop full of fun and nostalgic themeing. Immersive, clever and definitely fun room. I believe Houdini's Southampton have now taken over/merged with handmade mysteries so definitely book this room now it's back for all to enjoy!
Love that you start in a pub! Amazing games master who gets involved in the game at stages brilliant ending!
Quirky room now playable as a private group. I found it a little light on puzzles, but the enthusiasm of the (interactive) game master did make up for it. Music was incredibly off-puttingly loud however which was not enjoyed by either of us - to the extent that you could not hear audio aspects of the game that were required to complete the game.
Reviews by escape room review sites
A few months ago I noticed that Houdini's Escape Room were advertising a new room called Poppa Plocks Wonky Workshop, an 18+ room and the adverts for it gave it a dark tone, so of course, once our busy October period was through I had to make sure that my first stop after scare season was to Houdini's to experience this room. Poppa Plock's Wonky Workshop is actually a relocated escape from from the now non operational Handmade Myserties. I met up with some friends and we entered this wonderful escape room. We had all previously done at least one other room by them in the fantastic RMS Titanic so all of us knew the level that this company could do. We arrived and were greeted by a wonderful guy who checked us in and told us to take a seat. After a small wait and a couple of games of Pucket we were taken to the briefing cinema room. We filled out the forms and had a lovely chat with the guy (Whose name escapes me, sorry). He told us to wait here and we would be collected for our room shortly.
Houdinis Escape Tenpin Southampton: Poppa Plock’s Wonky Workshop
November 2022
Overview
This was third visit to Houdini’s in Southampton after visiting Onslow Road to complete Titanic and the previous day taking on Extinct at the Tenpin location. Due to the escape rooms being located at a huge bowling alley, there is plenty of parking on site. There is a big waiting area with plenty of seating before being taken into the start of the main brief. There is a refreshment area and a sideboard selling a lot of home escape games. We were taken to an old cinema style room with popcorn machine and cinema screen ready to show us our brief. The host was brilliant in going straight into character and taking us to our room to start.
Room impression
The room was decorated brilliantly, completely emerging yourself into an old toy workshop with dusty old games, cabinets and dim lighting. It was hard to tell if some of the props were old and tattered and needed replacing or whether it was part of the immersive experience. Our game master set up the scene well, explaining what our mission was. We haven’t done a game based on an old toy workshop and we all enjoyed exploring the different areas of the workshop and being immersed into the theme of it all with toy music being played in the background.
Puzzles
There was nothing groundbreaking in the puzzles of this room, padlocks mixed in with some coded games and some old fashioned arcade games for fun. You can easily see your progress in the room with the big lights being lit when you completed a puzzle. One thing we did enjoy was the game master coming in and out of the room completely in character. Normally you would think this would ruin the immersive experience but it actually added a nice element to the game and something we have not experienced before. Some negative points, one of the games broke when we were attempting it and it took the game master to come in and fix it half way through and one puzzle in particular was really tricky for us to solve due to poor lighting and positioning of some of the elements of the puzzle. This put quite a big dampener on the room for us as we spent a lot of time on this puzzle and made us being very close the finish line in terms of time. The finish however was really good and again, something we have not done before.
Game Master Clues
We had to ask for some help on the one puzzle mentioned above due to us simply not being able to work it out and the game master came into the room in character to assist us. She also came in to the room on another occasion to point us in the right direction when we deviated but for the most of the game, she left us to it.
Round Up
After completing Extinct and Titanic over the course of the weekend, we did have high hoped for this room and if we being honest, we felt it lacked a little something compared to the others. The a puzzle breaking and one of them appearing to be very difficult to solve for a combination of reasons, it just put a dampener on the game. During a few moments of the game where the puzzles were linear, a few of the areas were quite tight and some of us were stood around watching whilst others were completing tasks. For bigger teams, this might be much more of an issue. None the less, the experience of the room and the theme were good and it is worth trying when visiting Southampton.
Handmade Mysteries are famous for the quality of their hosts, who are costumed and in character from the outset, and Poppa Plock upholds that reputation - Wynne was excellent.
The large space is a big change, and an improvement, on Handmade's previous game, which for bigger teams could get a little cramped. It's also packed with gadgets and geegaws. With loud audio and a stream of suggestions from the hint doll in the corner, it approaches overwhelming, at least until you start to get a grip on...
