Captive Experiences — Local services in Hastings

Perhaps I've been spoiled at other escape rooms round the country but I was unimpressed with this one. The rooms were literally just white painted cubes with a handful of props scattered around. If you look at a lot of other companies they go all out with production value to immerse you in the room. That is very much not the case here. The limited props and clues they did have were very tired. Some were broken and the laminated papers were all dog eared and falling apart. We asked for a clue at one point in the game and the staff member had to come into the room to show us how to do it! Again, not immersive at all when someone just walks into the room. There definitely wasn't enough to do in the room and although there were only 3 of us, there were time where some of us had nothing to do. Whilst the staff were pleasant enough, they were very lackluster. Again, perhaps we've been spoiled but at a lot of other games we've done around the country, the staff are so high energy and welcoming. Where as here we walked in the door and immediately had the terms and conditions thrust into our hands. The story was then given to us on another sheet of paper rather than being explained to us in person.

Perhaps if you've never done an escape room before, you'll get more out of this than we did but if you've done a few, you're not going to love it.

As a note to the owners, I would strongly suggest you take yourselves and your staff to and have a look at the rooms at Tulleys Farm, Pier Pressure and Hounds to see just how good escape rooms can be and how much the staff can make or break...

Upon arrival we discovered the host was on her own and rather run off her feet as a large group were just leaving. She showed us to our room - The Fall of Saigon - and briefly explained the buttons by the door and how to get our unlimited clues. There was no countdown clock on the wall which was disappointing and the clues came through a tannoy which didn’t work so we had to wait for the lady to appear upstairs each time we asked for a clue. The music playing in the room was also too loud to hear through the tannoy. The lighting is the room was rather dim which didn’t help with clues or padlocks ! The BRAND new wooden puzzle box could not be opened by us and the host really struggled and she knew how it worked. The luck based game took a long time to complete. The padlocks had a button to press after the correct code had been entered which wasn’t explained to us at the start Whilst we didn’t manage to escape , we were told we had got the furtherest in this room which is good but do feel that with all the stoppages that some of our hour was used up waiting for the lady to come to the room with a clue which should of been added...

We were disappointed to find the escape room to be very basic in decor (props and decoration seemed to be from Poundland, very cheap feel) the waiting room also felt very dated and bland and more akin to a Jobcentre. There was no real atmosphere or music, challenges very basic and lazy, the timings weren’t great with things triggered at the wrong time. The hosts gave a warm welcome however we were just handed an old misspelled laminate sheet at the beginning which explained the theme rather than the host giving a talk and setting the scene which would have been nice. The intercom was inaudible when trying to communicate with the host during our experience.

So much wasted potential considering how much culture and history Hastings has with its smugglers roots - a room based on smugglers could have done so much more and gone a lot further with this theme. Better props, scenery, challenges, music and media needed to make this a worthwhile experience.

We gave constructive feedback to the hosts without any response. This was a birthday treat but sadly a big...