Locked In A Room Bristol — Local services in Bristol

Easily the worst escape room I've ever been to, both for the puzzles and overall experience.

First, the incredibly rude staff member at the front desk. A friend and I popped out of the building to find a toilet and when we came back the rest of our group had been ushered off to the room under the promise that he'd bring us to them. He refused to do that, saying it shouldn't matter and he didn't know which room, instead putting us in a different one with people we didn't know! He was pushy and unpleasant, and treated us like the dirt on his shoe. To top it off there was also a customer toilet that he failed to mention when we said why we were leaving. We did complain about the staff member on exit so I hope he has been spoken to.

Then we come to the puzzles. If you like trying a lot of 4-digit codes in a lot of 4-digit padlocks then this is the escape room for you. It was too linear with little opportunity for people to work in parallel and the narrative wasn't engaging either. It would probably be ok as an introduction to escape rooms or for children but it didn't hold our attention. The clues on the screen were also a good 5-10 minutes after we'd already done them which was weird.

Overall a pretty miserable experience. I wish I had walked out at the start and...

We played Locked in a Room at Parallax and left frustrated and disappointed. Right from the start, the instructor mixed everyone up and rushed us through the briefing, which didn’t set a great tone.

The game itself was fine until the final stage, when we entered the correct code multiple times and nothing happened — even after the clue on the screen confirmed it was right. We wasted a good 15 minutes trying to get it to work, only for the lock to suddenly open after a random string of numbers.

When we explained this to the staff afterwards, we were met with zero interest. No apology, no acknowledgement, just a dismissive “it was your fault” and a shrug. For the price they charge, that attitude is unacceptable. Clues took far too long to arrive when requested, and no staff came in to check or help when things clearly weren’t working.

This was our second visit here, and sadly it will be our last. The puzzles aren’t the problem — the poor organisation, slow response times, and complete lack of customer care are. If you want a fun escape room experience where staff actually care about your game, go...

Similar to many other "escape" / "break out" places, this one was slightly different as the two games have up to 4 teams attempting to break out of the room at the same time (so you're not just racing against the clock).

Like the old point-and-click adventure computer games of the 90s, the challenge is as much to understand how the puzzle setters think to understand how you might be able to untangle each of the puzzles presented.

Our group had 6 people, and this was possibly 1 too many in terms of being able for everyone to get involved in all of the puzzles, as towards the end the number of things to try (combination locks etc) decreases. Having said that, the flow of the puzzles didn't seem to ebb and flow too much and the on screen helping hints didn't feel like they were directing matters or digging you out of a impossible situation.

Quite looking forward to going back to attempt the...