Break Free Preston — Attraction in Preston

Having completed around 20 escape rooms, I telephoned in advance to ask for their opinion on which would be the most suitable room, as suggested on the website. Following a very short discussion with a member of staff, I booked Alcatraz on their recommendation. They suggested this was the only room that would be suited to us. We came here with high hopes having read some great reviews and after looking at the website we were impressed by the themes of the rooms. Sadly, these high hopes faded fairly quickly into our experience (not least thanks to the stale, white tinged Double Decker that got stuck in the vending machine - we should have left then!). My partner gets claustrophobic so asked for a slight amendment to the room (leaving a door unlocked) and we were told this was totally fine and to just shout through to a member of staff when we had the code for the unlocked door so they could let us know if it was correct or not and allow us to move on to the next stage. 15 minutes after waiting for someone to respond to us, my partner left the room to speak to a member of staff who then gave us a clue which was totally incorrect and led us down the wrong path entirely, wasting another 10 minutes of our time! We called through for another clue only to have a different staff member enter the room, tell us that her colleague was actually incorrect and say that she would add 5 minutes onto the clock for us to make up for the wasted time. We raced through the rest of the room in a very short time (which, had we not already found the code, would have been further helped by the fact that one of the locks wasn’t even connected to a bolt, meaning it simply slid open of its own accord) and soon found ourselves on the final challenge. The parts to complete this challenge were broken, the QR reader on the iPad was temperamental at best and the lack of writing implements meant this final challenge was virtually impossible. The time-up alert sounded (our extra 5 minutes had not been added on) and we waited a further 10 minutes for anyone to come and get us. When the staff member arrived, we asked him about the final puzzle. We had in fact worked out the correct answers and the only reason we hadn’t managed to complete it was down to the broken pieces! When we pointed this out, he simply said “oh, you should hold them on”…to expect 2 people to hold 5 separate wires (10 ends) together on various metal spikes is challenging at best and when we mentioned this he said “yes well this challenge is better for more people”…not once did anyone apologise for the broken puzzles, the poor technology or the wasted time thanks to incorrect advice/information.

All in all what could have been a great idea was executed incredibly poorly; we shall not be visiting Escape Reality again. Don’t waste your money on this chain when there are so many better independent escape...

We had high hopes for this escape room as the reviews overall for the place looked good online. When we arrived we were pleased to see Covid19 measures in place and we were welcomed by two members of staff. After checking in we over heard one of the staff members saying how badly somebody had done in one of the rooms but very rudely to the other guy. We were shocked at this because we have always been to escape rooms where they are very professional. Once in the room we were told to turn on the light in the room if we needed any help which I thought was weird as normally the hosts are listening and looking into the room to make sure everything is running smoothly but this wasn't the case here. The first task was pretty easy to crack and we moved onto the next clue. Unfortunately we lost so much time here even though we had cracked what we needed to do but the door wouldn't slide easily as it was covered by a metal edge. We didn't want to use too much strength as in reception there are signs about costs of up to £100 for any breakages. Once in the next room we found the numbers needed for the next task and put them into a padlock which didn't work. We knew this was the right answer so kept trying it but had no luck. After 15 minutes we called the guy back in and told him the answer and redid the lock to show it wasn't opening. He then played around with it as it must have been jammed and it opened but this left us with hardly any time left to do the final task. We received no apology that the padlock was jammed which cost us time as we know we would have escaped if this would have opened. The room itself was very basic with no real effort put into it. The lack of communication with people in the rooms was shocking as if this would have been in place they would have seen the problems we had come across and they could have been fixed sooner. The enjoyment was lost as you only had one task to do at a time and we left the venue feeling deflated. We did the gallery room as it was a gift. We were very interested in some of the other rooms but I don't think we...

We took part in the Alcatraz room and unfortunately couldn't finish properly due to broken props. Given the company has so many locations including in Las Vegas & Dubai we expected it to be really high quality and were so excited. Unfortunately we were really disappointed. Some of the clues/props were broken and there was one part that someone forgot to reset from a previous game so we wasted a lot of time on this as it didn't make any sense until we got further clues unlocked. Also this was the first one we've done were the staff member couldn't hear us so we spent at least 10 minutes confused as there were no more clues and there were two things that didn't seem to work or do anything, in the end we had to press a light switch which we were told would get the attention of the guy. He then actually came into the room and discovered the issues. He just said well we would have escaped anyway and let us out. He did apologise a lot and he was really very nice but the owner/manager really needs to sort this room out. Really they should be inspecting the rooms thoroughly every day. We were also given an iPad which we could use to scan little numbered QR codes to give us clues and at least one of these was faded so badly I could barely make out the number on it never mind the code to scan. It also didn't mention on the description online that our team would be split up which we would have picked a different room if we'd known, it would also have been helpful to know that there would be some crawling involved as I have back issues so perhaps the descriptions could be better written.

This would have been so much better if they were set up in a traditional way where someone can see and hear you and are in control of clues. Overall the room was a bit tired in general. Sadly we came away with a time that had no meaning as we wasted so much of our time with broken clues and were disappointed we didn't really get the satisfaction of releasing ourselves from the room and finishing properly.

If this room was anything to go by I'd recommend giving Escape...