We thoroughly enjoyed our first escape room experience with Lock’d Escape Rooms London (Grandpa’s Last Will – our review here), so when we were invited to come back to review their latest room, “The House of Alastair Moon” we were very excited.
Mr B was busy, working abroad, so he missed out on this one and three of our friends joined me. Opened after three years of research and development, The House of Alastair Moon is Lock’d’s most difficult room, so I was pleased to have such a great mix of different skills and backgrounds with me, including a globetrotting English dentist, a Korean-born finance professional, and a French lawyer. Two were first-timers, while myself and another friend had experience “escaping” before…
All photos, including feature photo (c) Lock’d Escape Rooms
Being a group of four turned out to be a good choice, too, because it allowed each of us to come up with a different approach to the puzzles while still being able to work as a team and gather around the clues without trampling on each others’ feet.
Were we going to be able to escape the room within the allotted time of one hour?
We were greeted by two staff members at the reception and given the background story: Alastair Moon was a highly successful, famous, filthy rich magician until an accident happened… and it was our task to uncover the mystery that befell his fate… We felt ready to enter the great man’s weird and wondrous London mansion…
The first room is always the hardest as we each had to get into the right frame of mind. It’s a mix of what I imagine detective work looks like and just plain simple curiosity and nosiness. You have to turn every stone in every corner of the room. If it looks wrong, it’s probably a clue, if it looks right, it’s probably also a clue. Each clue is different, requires a different technique and approach. There are plenty of red herrings and complex decoys. Nothing is as it seems, or is it?
Fortunately, we were given a walkie-talkie, our lifeline to the front desk, and able to use it to get five clues along the treacherous journey to truth. And we escaped just within the hour! So much fun! We all kept rambling on about the clues and puzzles on our walk to the tube… Already planning our next escape room experience!
Looking for more fun things to do? Check out our posts about powerboating, hot air ballooning, rowing in Venice, rock-climbing, and or our trip to the Sahara. For some restaurant reviews, feel welcome to have a look at our posts about Gruvelageret near the North Pole, Lafleur, Frankfurt, Beso, London, The Porch House, Stow-on-the-Wold, and Benoit, Paris.
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