Houdini's Escape Room Experience - Southampton city centre — Local services in Southampton

We are visitors of Southampton and wanted to do an escape room. We decided to try the most difficult room and we're quite excited. We paid for parking at around 11.10 to give us time before starting at 11.30am. We filled out the forms and waited. After 11.30am, we were told our quiz master was not answering calls and we needed to wait. We had to then go and sort out the parking again because we only paid for 90 minutes and their tardiness meant we would go over the parking time and might get a fine. It was around 30 minutes from 11.30am we waited (we got there earlier) and finally, they decided to get a different quiz master to begin the game for us, and then when our initial quiz master came, they'd take over.

When we went in the room, we were not given the walkie talkie, which also meant we didn't have a torch. It was dark and we couldn't see some things. 10 minutes later we finally got the walkie talkie and was told it has a torch - great... then we started seeing things we needed to solve.

When some of the puzzles were completed, for example, if they opened doors, no noise or awareness was made, which meant we would try other combinations and then after some time, we were finally told the door is open. This happened twice. We also had a hand print that was needed and when we did it the first times, it didn't work. It seemed that some of the puzzles needed rhe quiz master to take control for it to work, which was frustrating as the temp quiz master had his own game to run, and if it was our original one who was already late, they were not focused on us and their running of the game as we had to wait for puzzles we would have completed earlier but they didn't do. We had to access a login and only after several attempts and asking for clues, they finally said that they, indirect quote, "don't believe in capital letters" - so they not say this first when we asked about the name? the ID has capitals and spaces, we were wasting time on this linear task because of this ridiculous loophole. We finally got through to the second room and then third room, but even then, weighing some of the eggs showed that they weren't the correct weight. The [new or original] quiz master came through and told us we didn't get out, monotone voice and all. They ushered us out for a photo quickly and to get our things, and we were out the establishment within 2 minutes... After 30 minutes extra waiting, mix up of quiz masters, lack of acknowledgment or response to puzzles, we believe we were also duped of around 5-10 minutes based on when we left. It was a real disappointment. The fact that 3 out of the 5 of us were extremely familiar with escape rooms as we had done well over 30 around the uk and in a couple other countries, even when we didn't complete rooms, we still left really happy and talked about what we could've done better. For this room, we left disappointed and discussed how poorly run it was, and how we wasted additional parking fees for this. I contacted them directly with this complaint and asked for a resolution, with some saying a manager will be in touch. this was over 3 weeks ago and we have heard nothing. From reviews, it seems they dont care to do better with the difficult room and maybe the pass rate is low because of these inadequate and incompetent runnings of it. I do not recommend this place, especially the difficult room as ive seen reviews of the same. Reflect and do better. We are waiting for a resolution and your response. Ill be letting the 4 other members of the team to leave their reviews if we again, do not...

So, it was my oldest nibling's, Ry, 16th birthday on Saturday...and as part of the celebration, my sister, Christy, booked an escape room experience for four of us (Christy, me, Ry and Kate, our close friend/Ry's surrogate aunt).

I've never actually done an escape room in person before, though I have done various different online experiences and interactive experiences. A physical escape room was something that was entirely new to me, so I was really looking forward to it.

The storyline was fairly straightforward. Our (the players) car had broken down, and the owner of the nearby hotel had kindly offered the use of one of their hotel rooms for the night: room 12. The only stipulation was that, if we were able to get out of room 12 (which was the initial escape), we were to stay away from room 13.

So. Room 12 was small and only had one bed. After an initial discussion about who would get the bed (we decided on Ry, since it was their birthday), we got to work on finding the key...since we were locked into room 12 overnight, as the key had been lost in the room somewhere. (I know, I know. Terrible service).

The main puzzle in room 12 involved figuring out the codes to unlock a piece of luggage that had carelessly been left behind by the previous occupant of the room. The puzzles were pretty interesting and easy to figure out; though as Christy pointed out, we had Kate and Ry with us...both of whom are very competitive...so we had a fairly good chance of completing the escape room, even with the 50% success rate.

It was after we got out of room 12 that things got especially interesting. At this point, we were no longer looking for a way out of the room. We were trying to solve the mystery of the hotel. What happened in room 13?

There was obviously a huge amount of effort that had gone into creating the escape room, to the point that I was beginning to feel bad about the mess we'd made in the lobby of the hotel. There was also a lot of scary, supernatural stuff going on in the hotel! For instance, the lights went off a few times (which made us scream and at one point, Kate just held her arms out so we could all hudde together) and some of the doors randomly opened. Clearly, there was something very sinister going on in the hotel that was centred around room 13.

In the end, we did manage to solve the mystery of room 13...in just under 40 minutes and only using one hint. Our GM had a lot of complimentary things to say about that! Speaking of which, Freya did an awesome job at playing her role; wonderful experience all around and giving us the hint we needed to figure out the last puzzle, while knowing when we weren't actually asking for hints and had just accidentally hit the front desk bell (though the lights went off right after I knocked a box onto the bell, so we did think maybe that was meant to be a hint...but apparently not).

As I mentioned, this was a really great experience and definitely one that I want to repeat. I wouldn't play the same game again, since there's no challenge in finishing a room you've already beaten once, but there are plenty of other escape rooms available at...

brilliant time as always at Houdini’s, we played Room 13 at the Westquay location. Very easy to find, really nice venue with lovely and well themed waiting area. staff were all very friendly on arrival! our games master georgie was wonderful - she is a credit to houdini’s and we’re really glad that she was our games master. and babs was also equally brilliant, with extra points for the outfit… she briefed us fantastically and explained everything we’d need to know. she was friendly, funny, and I genuinely had a good laugh talking to her.

the room itself was so intriguing, we didn’t do much research into the theme before I booked because we like to be surprised and I’m glad we did this because walking in we were impressed by the size of the room and the decoration. puzzles were super fun and entertaining, the storyline kept us invested and the time flew by so fast. the room had a creepy vibe and cool lighting effects, I did get a bit frightened a few times so soz georgie for screaming.

georgie gave us the perfect level of clue for what we were stuck on and came into the room promptly to help us whenever we asked. it was clear that she was paying attention to our game and she stayed in perfect character throughout.

we will definitely be back, and hopefully we will be blessed with georgie as our games master again, she deserves wonderful things because she absolutely made our already great experience even...