Houdini's Escape Room Experience - Dundee — Local services in Great Britain

Having had an amazing time at an escape room in Edinburgh with my sister several years ago, I thought it would be the perfect gift for my dad’s 70th birthday.

When we arrived for our game, we expected a warm greeting, but there was nobody at reception, so we had to ring a bell. At first I wasn’t even sure if the person who entered was a member of staff or another customer as she barely acknowledged us. She handed us an iPad, told us to fill in our details, then abruptly left the room again, all while looking like we’d disturbed her during her lunch break. It was not a good first impression, and though we smiled and nodded and tried to stay positive, it soured the tone for the rest of the experience.

The room itself wasn’t any better. In addition to being shabby and containing worn or broken props, it didn’t feel immersive at all, and only when I read reviews afterwards did I find out that there were meant to be digital displays and sound effects. Neither of these were present on our visit - no visuals and complete silence other than the sounds of people ten-pin bowling outside.

One of the best aspects of my prior escape room experience was the communication between the host and the players: asking us if we needed a hint, letting us know if we were chasing a dead-end, and listening to our discussion so they knew how to help. So you can imagine my disappointment when I discovered there was no two-way audio communication available.

Our host had told us to wave to the camera if we needed help, meaning we had to wait for her to notice us, then wait for her to walk down from reception. Given this significant inconvenience, as well as the apathy of our host, we were reluctant to ask for help, only doing so twice when we were at a complete loss. We spent ten minutes on the same puzzle without help or intervention, and once we’d called her down for a clue, she then let us continue that same puzzle for another ten minutes without help.

Our host then came in to tell us our time was up, curtly informing us: “you spent twenty minutes on [X] puzzle”, “you should have asked for more help”, and “there were another two more rooms to go.”

And with that, I burst into tears. Not only had I wasted my time and money on an unimmersive, broken experience with a rude member of staff, but we had missed two-thirds of it because she didn’t bother to tell us there were three rooms and that we, on average, needed to complete each room in around twenty minutes, which indeed would have necessitated asking for more help. It broke my heart.

When I returned home, I read the five-star reviews gushing about, among other things, the ‘acting’ of their host and how they really ‘made the experience’. I had no idea our host was supposed to be playing a role. She wasn’t wearing a costume, gave her introduction sat behind a desk with same rote delivery as the health and safety instructions, and her only ad-libbing was chastising us for touching a lamp when we’d asked for help.

It was in these same reviews that I found there was meant to be two-way audio, ours was simply not working. If a key technical element of an attraction is broken (as well as no sound or digital displays), then it becomes ‘out of order’ and stops taking customers. To take people's money for something that doesn’t even function correctly, let alone the myriad of other issues, is disingenuous at best, and exploitative at worst.

I emailed Houdini’s over ten days ago, granting them the courtesy of an opportunity to make things right before finalising my review - which I thought only fair.

I’ve heard nothing from them. This completely ruined my dad’s 70th birthday celebration, upset my mum, and drove me to tears, and they didn’t even have the decency to take five minutes to write back to me.

This is a company that does not care about the upkeep or functionality of their rooms, the performance or attitude of their staff, or the satisfaction of their customers.

There are far better escape rooms out there. I do not...

Took us about 40 minutes to escape the hardest rated room. The room itself was good, with 3 sections and a variety of challenges. It was more than just padlocks.

Unfortunately the actual experience was not good. Despite arriving 15 minutes before our booking time, as instructed, we didn't actually get into our room until 20 minutes after our start time. We spent half an hour stood in a very overcrowded, small check-in room with about 20 people in a 2 X 5 metre space, which surely cannot be compliant with fire regulations and occupancy rules. The single member of staff running it was absent from the reception for up to 15 minutes at a time. Both the check-in room and the escape rooms were so hot I felt almost like I would pass out at times.

We also got given clues without asking for them, which was very disappointing as we were told at the start we would only get clues if we specifically asked for them, which none of us did, yet we got 4 or 5 unprompted and were told at the end most people get about 9.

I feel if we hadn't had clues we would have been closer to the hour mark or may have failed, but at least we would have felt it was an honest attempt rather than cheating. One part of one room was apparently not correctly reset so if not for a hint at that point we would have been stuck due to improperly arranged props. The worst part for me though was when one locked item was taken out of a group members hand by the game master and solved for us, again without any request.

The "scares" we were promised were not at all scary but I can't really blame the guy since he was so overrun and behind. There should be one employee per room but there seemed to only be one on duty for three rooms and the reception.

We had food included with the booking but it was stone cold by the time it was given to us because the venue brought it 20 minutes before we got out of the room for some reason.

In summary, the puzzles and the room theming are good and meet the expected standard for a mass-market escape setting, but the venue is not suited to running at full capacity and has not employed enough staff to deal with being...

A group of us tried the Titanic experience. Having done a few escape rooms between us, this was the worst experience any of us have had.

There was a step the staff controlled, they clearly had not been paying attention as we had been doing the right thing, but they did not action it at their end and therefore we couldn't progress.

The speaker system in the room did not work. It was very faint when we could hear it at all. The problem with this, is that this is where help, clues and certain sounds signalling the next step should have been available. We ended up getting stuck a few times and the girl came into the room saying they'd been trying to speak to us for 5 minutes- clearly as we had not responded, continuing to wave at the camera for help, they should have made attempts to communicate with us in a different way, much earlier on, with time being of the essence. We didn't get to finish the room, despite having the last code ready, because we didn't hear a beep signalling we can insert a code, we fiddled around for another 5 minutes thinking we were missing something. Again, due to the faulty system. I am not particularly concerned about not finishing the room, but at £25/person, the least I would expect is a functioning room or a workaround if staff are aware of the issue. They had the option to use a phone to give us clues, which they did not use.

I explained to the girl at the end that the system needs to be fixed and her response was a shrug and she said that's fine. I explained it wasn't fine as it significantly affects customer experience and she told us to have a nice day and opened the door for us to leave. Throughout her explaining things to us, she could not have cared less and looked incredibly bored. I would have expected at least an apology , but none was forthcoming. I would not recommend this escape room as it is very poor...