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

I have done around 20+ escape rooms now, and have previously done Extinct here. I would have rated Extinct at the mid-low in terms of quality and experience. Titanic and Alcatraz at Houdini's other location were good, I can't comment on them at this location. Now the bad parts... We arrived 10 minutes before our alloted time, there's no waiting area visible, no doorbell, no sign saying "wait here and we will let you in 5 minutes before", just a locked door. 2 minutes before the allotted time someone finally opened the door, at this point there are 5 groups of people waiting to be let in. We all go into the actual waiting area and now have to check in and sign waivers. We then waited around for a total of 15 minutes, meaning we were 15 minutes late to start our 1st room, and would have little time between finishing the 1st room and starting the 2nd room. I'm going to list our issues so management can hopefully improve. Waiting around, no greeting. Waiver process. Fix it. There's no signal there, so you can't do it online. But put the QR code and instructions outside the main door so you can do it while you're waiting. Allow people to do it online before they come. Allow previously used waivers to be reused. We did a 2nd escape room straight after and had to redo the whole thing for each team member. Allow multiple people to sign the waiver in the party more efficiently. Stop trying to harvest people's data . The staff were very disinterested, we felt like a conveyor belt... The briefings were quick and delivered with zero feeling or interest. Poor.

The rooms. We did Curse of the Black Pearl and the space one.

Spoilers

Black Pearl Design was ok, nothing amazing. We romped through most of it, but found several of the clues and info to be confusing. We would have finished the room with 20 minutes to spare, but overlooked something, which was annoying. The clue system doesn't work well because the parrot is in another room behind a door, so you can't hear it. Chanting spells and stuff doesn't fit with the vibe of the room.

The space one Add a light or something to the puzzle in the pod so people know it is 'live'. We were confused if the people in the pods could escape yet so we asked and were told they couldn't. This was a misunderstanding as they in fact could, so we wasted 5 minutes trying to get the people outside to do something to help the people inside. The pods are damaged and needs repairing. Production values inside the pod need reviewing, a bit of paint would help. The AI voice and the voice of the games master were hard to understand. There are padlocks in the main room which are nothing to do with the game, which is confusing. Change them to a specific colour and tell customers to ignore red padlocks or something. Some of the puzzles and clues were odd. We seemed to use the boxes twice/for two things, the gas composition and unlocking a lock on the left side of the room. The navigation part was the most frustrating at the end. A space station is not a space craft?? That's stupid. Having to ask the AI which solar system you are in is also rubbish. There's got to be better ways to do that. Recommend reviewing that part. The final sequence in the escape pod was a let down. Sitting there with all the switches and the screen, we thought there was a final challenge, but there wasn't. The screen says escape pod failed, but we got out fine and the door just opened. Would be 10x better if players had to do a final switch sequence, or flick switches following prompts on the screen. The screen should show you ejecting, or a check list, then show you safely ejected and landing on the planet or something, not "escape sequence failed". A poor ending in our opinion.

There were lots of things that could have been done differently to improve both rooms, and that is a shame. The overall experience was unfortunately a real letdown and doesn't reflect previous experience with other Houdini's locations and rooms. It seems to us that this location is a conveyor belt/cash cow and the experience is...

We did the Carnival Escape room. We weren't told it was going to be in complete darkness. Very odd that it was an expectation to use our phone torches. Torches aren't provided but we were given two after asking several times before the start. We were shouting for clues (you were allowed 7 in total) but no one came until ages. This is because the audio was broken and they didn't hear us. There were live actor's. We were told that they can stop at any time if any of the group didn't like it or just felt anxious. I have since realised that this would be quite difficult if they couldn't hear us! Also, there was meant to be automatic doors which didn't work either. They said we could have that time added on. I felt like we weren't really being watched as close as we were lead to believe. The whole place was tired and worn considering its not been open very long. The male toilets were broken. We used the £15 deal to include pizza for each player. We had two pizza's between 7 of us. We also ordered some chips which were completely overpriced for the single layer in a tray! These were delivered to the table ages before the pizza arrived. When the pizza finally came out. It was 45 minutes after we ordered and it was over cooked. We couldn't be bothered to complain and took the kids for a McDonald's instead. I've had much better escape room experiences. Maybe more practice is needed by the staff. Such a shame as the idea was good. We went for my boys birthday. I'm grateful he is a little too young to notice it wasn't up...

I am writing to formally express my dissatisfaction with the experience I recently had at the escape room in your Park Royal Acton branch. After booking this activity over three months ago as a special outing with five friends, we were met with what I believe was highly unprofessional treatment. Our planned experience was not only denied without legitimate reason, but I am now also left with the task of pursuing a refund that was promised yet never provided.

Upon our arrival, a staff member named Kortney refused my group entry to the escape room, citing an unfounded assumption that I was intoxicated, allegedly based on a lighthearted joke I made before entering. This assumption was entirely inaccurate. Despite this, Kortney proceeded to have my entire group sign waivers, giving us the impression we were about to enter the escape room. Shortly after, however, we were told we could not participate, with no substantial explanation. The sudden refusal and the presence of over 20 other patrons waiting strongly suggest that the venue had overbooked and lacked capacity for our reservation.

Furthermore, Kortney assured us that a refund would be processed, asking us to wait for a call to confirm the refund was being arranged. However, no such call ever came. As a result, not only was I and my group unfairly denied entry, but I am now also required to spend additional time and effort following up on the refund and formally submitting...