The Crystal Maze LIVE Experience — Attraction in Manchester

WOULD NOT RECOMMEND FOR PEOPLE WITH LEARNING DISABILITIES OR WHO LIKE TO CONSIDER AND SOLVE PROBLEMS

Facilities were great and tasks were fun, but it's frustrating because the time for each task is WAYYYY too short . I ended up mind blanking because of the stress and barely processing half of the tasks, even the ones I would normally easily be able to do . It bordered on unenjoyable for most of the course . The tasks are physically or mentally difficult on their own , without the short timelines and other extra twists they use to make them harder.

Example: a task where you shoot targets with a crossbow - they hide arrows that won't fire amongst the bunch, as if hitting 5 moving light up targets with a pound land crossbow in 2 minutes wouldn't be hard enough. On the egg tree task , our guide actually admitted the only person they'd ever seen complete it was one incredibly tall man , simply because most people dont have long enough arms.

The difficulty on the puzzle rooms was about escape room level (i do escape rooms regularly) but with a fraction of the time , so you can't actually solve the puzzles . You're basically just guessing your way through the tasks by gut feel and doing whatever your team mates shout at you because you don't have the time to stand and consider the problem, search the room and tease out the logical leaps .

Example: you had to make multiple leaps of logic that didn't necessarily follow including opening a random draw that blended in with the desk , putting your hand on a hole in the wall, reading the periodic table multiple times and pretty complicated mental math including square roots. I have a STEM degree and even I struggled with this under time pressure. The guide had to essentially tell me what to do at some points. I couldn't imagine if I hadn't seen a periodic table in years or didnt do mental math daily.

It's a crying shame because the tasks and the sections as a whole would be so fun if you actually had the time to enjoy them and think and have a go without ridiculously short deadlines or unnecessary added difficulty, But you can't enjoy it or really look around the sets because you're rushed to the next section and by the time you've entered the room and realized what you have to do (you go in blind) you've eaten up half your time and have to leave the task half way finished so you don't get locked in.

Maybe offer an easy mode with double the time or without time limits ? Or sessions/ nights where all of the tasks are open to anyone who wants to try them without worrying about time ? Being able to walk around freely doing all the tasks would be amazing because each section is so well done and the tasks would be really fun if you didnt have to stress .

Overall, if you're a massive fan of the original and don't mind stress, you'll enjoy it . But be prepared to be locked in ALLOT or abandon crystals often. They have decided to make it as close to the TV show as possible so be prepared for incredibly difficult tasks . Beyond or equal to escape room and adventure training level , but with a fraction of the time.

If that's your bag , I would recommend . But I think for the majority of people who are just looking for a fun day out and don't work like the SAS under pressure ,...

I can sum up the experience in one word. Disappointing.

It seemed they couldn't get us out fast enough. You start by taking a group photo, there are apparently props available but we were never told about them.

Then we met our game host. He was lovely and very charismatic. However the games really let him down, the second game we played the crossbow broke with 30 secs to go. We were given no extra time and ended up just throwing the arrows at the target. Unsurprisingly this didn't work well.

Another game we found all the clues to solve the riddle but the writing had rubbed off and it was completely illegible. I passed it round my team mates and no one could read it.

By this point I'm extremely frustrated as I've paid a lot of money and feel like the least they can do is maintain the equipment.

We were taken to another game in the futuristic section that was broken as well. Although we did get to play another game instead.

Finally we made it to the dome. You get another group picture here and my group was especially excited about the bomb er jackets we'd seen people wear online. We asked if we could wear them but were ignored. They took the group picture without warning so we all just looked scared and confused.

One fan in the dome wasn't working so the silver paper wasn't being thrown up.

Finally we finished the experience and the staff can't locate the key for the lockers they had stowed our bags in. Which seems like a ridiculously unsafe system.

After all of this, they try to charge £15 for one photo or £35 for 6. Our photos were all pretty bad anyway.

I was really disheartened as I can see the potential of this being a great experience and from other reviews it has been. Unfortunately it seems how much you enjoy it depends entirely on which staff...

I had an amazing time at the Crystal Maze, the games were fun, and many crystals won. It was perfectly adaptated from the TV show to a live experience. We all had a good time and all the staff were brilliant...

But the thing is, fellow review readers at home, I chose this place as the venue for our wedding. Truly an incredible experience the big day was, having a majority of our family and friends taking part in the experience before the ceremony, which disarmed me so much by having fun, my nerves came in the moment I saw my wife-to-be take the steps up the Crystal dome, an incredible experience none of us will soon forget, and I do not envy the people that get married after us.To everyone that worked for our day, thank you so much. Special thanks to Naivette Henriquez, who was an incredible planner, solid as a rock throughout, and MC/Maze Master Foo, who was amazing. Our nephew, Steven, and our pug, Cookie (Yes, we even had our pugs at the ceremony as ring bearers, too) took a real shining to you, and we don't blame them.

Having a wedding at the Crystal Maze really showed everyone that weddings can mean more than the bride and groom getting together, but uniting their families as one, and that even a venue like this can have a personal flair not many venues can even compete with.

The games were great, but on a personal note, thank you so much for getting the proper theme music, too. I have a fixation with great theme songs, and the CM theme was a favourite of mine, so running through whilst listening to that song was a rush of dopamine for me.

Thank you all so much, I'd give 10 stars if Google would let me, this is not the last you see of us, I...