GR8escape York — Local services in England

This review is for the Space Cadet room.

Positives: The puzzles were challenging and clever. The host was very friendly. We were able to bring our baby into the room with us.

Negatives: No sense of immersion. Being led (un-blindfolded) into what looks like a messy classroom with light streaming in through the windows hardly makes you feel like you are in a spacecraft, and the puzzles, despite being space-themed, had nothing to do with the mission. Nothing to discover. Having every single puzzle accessible as soon as you step into the room feels overwhelming, and also means there is no 'aha' moment of discovery. No journey. As mentioned, everything is basically laid out in front of you from the beginning, which means you don't follow a journey or storyline, you just go solve some puzzles. This increases the difficulty of the room, but it also makes it less fun, and it naturally encourages the group to split up rather than go through the experience together. Poor time management. This is partly our fault, because we spent a disproportionate amount of time on one or two puzzles (ultimately our downfall), but it is also the job of the host to monitor how a group is performing and give them a necessary push in the right direction so that they can complete as many of the puzzles as possible (unless they specifically ask for no help). This is not a personal criticism of our host, but of the processes that are in place. Poor ending. When our time ran out, our host simply opened the door, briefly explained the puzzles we had failed to solve, then led us out. I believe that teams should be afforded additional time to at least complete the puzzle they are working on - after all, we have paid a significant amount of money to do so. Also, the ending should be an immersive part of the experience, not just someone telling you whether you finished or not. No request for feedback. I would have been happy to provide this feedback in person at the time, but we were never prompted for our thoughts. I believe that actively requesting feedback from every single customer is an important part of creating any successful business, including escape rooms.

Having said all this, the reviews here are mostly positive, so I guess they have found their market. It's probably a decent escape room to start with if you have never done one before, although if that's the case then I would recommend one of the easier rooms. They seem like a nice bunch and as mentioned the puzzles were actually quite good, so I hope that they can build on their potential and improve some of the other aspects of...

Lost Treasure of Atlantis - found it!

We did the Lost Treasure of Atlantis room at Gr8escape last weekend and enjoyed it enormously.

We’ve done quite a few escape rooms, and this was one of our favourites in York.

The puzzles The clues were especially clever with lots of variety to them and some cool mechanisms. It really required us to all put our heads together and think outside the box. It was a particularly good room for a team of around 4 since there were A LOT of puzzles to solve so everyone could be getting on with different things. At one point I was thinking we’d have no chance of success when I saw how much there was to do!

The staging The staging wasn’t initially the most impressive I’ve ever seen in terms of atmosphere as the entry room was quite plain, but honestly it didn’t matter because the puzzles were so good it wasn’t long before we were completely immersed in the treasure hunt.

Difficulty level I’d say this was one of the more challenging escape rooms we’ve done – mostly because of the sheer volume of things to solve and not because the clues were infuriating or stupid. We did finish with about 11 minutes to spare and felt pretty chuffed with ourselves afterwards. The success rate for the room is advertised as around 43% so that did boost our egos a little. I have to say, even if we hadn’t escaped though, I’d be going back for more at the Gr8escape because of the quality of the challenges. Really top notch.

Staff Our games master – Grace – was brilliant. Really friendly, great at explaining everything. We did require a few clues but they were only given when we were really floundering which gave us a good push try to figure out things for ourselves. I’ve been in some escape rooms where they seem to give you clues before you really need them, and this was not one of those.

Grace was encouraging and enthusiastic with us when we came out on the usual post-escape-room buzz, explained the clues we’d got stuck on – there was one that flummoxed the life out of us and might still be bugging me to this day if she hadn’t explained it to us. Thank you.

Overall All in all, I would recommend this escape room to everyone, including veterans who are no longer easy to impress! If the quality of the puzzles is your top criteria, this is definitely a room you’re going to enjoy.

This was a 5-star experience for us. I am really looking forward to returning for their...

Had an excellent time at GR8Escape York! We did the Alice in Wonderland room, unfortunately we did not escape! But we at least made it over halfway! The room was an excellent challenge and really had us thinking the whole time. There is an excellent surprise after the halfway mark but i won’t spoil it! Room is decorated great and really hits the Alice in Wonderland aesthetic! Staff were excellent, we were explained everything beforehand, rules and how to use locks and equipment and also given a storyline. We were given clues whenever we were stuck for a long period of time, clues were enough to push you in the right direction without giving the game away. Once we failed the room we were asked if we’d like to see what else was to be done and we did, another 30-40 minutes and i think we’d have had it! I would 100% recommend this to anyone visiting York and want something to do, those 60 minutes go very fast! We will be back again to tackle another room next time we...