Coming soon to London: Escape Rooms’ “Room 33” and Escape Hunt

Big Ben and its surrounding tower in London(Public domain photo via London Pictures.)

Two very exciting developments are coming soon to London. Escape Rooms opened a little over a month ago and its first room, the Pharoah’s Chamber, is already earning TripAdvisor reviews that are proving first class. The site’s second room, entitled Room 33, is scheduled to open this Thursday, 18th September, and the site is taking bookings already. The site is proving popular, particularly at weekends, with people who have enjoyed the site’s first room likely to come back to try the second, so you may well want to book soon.

The story behind Room 33 is that of a heist. As a guard to the emperor of the 17th century Qing dynasty of China, a valuable porcelain vase (believed to ensure that the dynasty will last forever) is stolen on your watch. Players travel through time to Room 33 of the modern-day British Museum, hence the name, and have to retrieve the priceless artefact and return it while your time machine’s portal remains open. Sounds intriguing and this site looks forward to hearing whether the second room matches up to the first.

A little further ahead, faithful reader Dean has pointed out that London’s Escape Hunt has published its location: 5 George Yard, right at the heart of the City of London, close to Bank station and within a javelin’s throw of some of the most famous old business institutions of the capital. While bookings are not being taken quite yet, The London Sinner have more, tantalising, detail, including a projected opening date: 3rd October.

The article suggests that the location will have ten(!) rooms, offering three different games. (While this site doesn’t yet have sufficient information to claim this as a record, a fortnight ago, The Mindtrap in Thessaloniki was being claimed to be Europe’s largest with only – “only”! – six. There are different ways of measuring “largest”, of course.) Quoting The London Sinner:

Find the murderer of a famous artist, save the life of a kidnap victim and, in a completely new departure for The Escape Hunt, track down the antidote to a deadly poison in an enigma especially created for the London experience(…)

All three games sound exciting, and the sprinkle of stardust is something new and distinctive. It’ll be a lot of fun to find out!

4 thoughts on “Coming soon to London: Escape Rooms’ “Room 33” and Escape Hunt”

  1. Escape Room’s Pharoah’s Chamber is terrific. Some general notes without spoiling anything: it’s somewhat different in flavour to most of the other London rooms, indeed, going in with preconceptions about how room escapes work can be a disadvantage. There’s some really clever ways of detecting puzzle completion which are brilliant, except when they don’t quite work properly and so are really frustrating!

    There’s a nice sense of progression through the puzzles, and it does better than most rooms in allowing your team to work on different puzzles simultaneously. The (literal) centerpiece puzzle is wonderful, brilliantly conceived and something I’ve not seen before, with a great “ah-ha” moment.

    It’s also properly tough, on par or possibly harder than ClueQuest’s Operation Blacksheep room – those two would be my current London picks for serious puzzlers.

  2. Thanks for the post. Our booking system will be live tomorrow we had many Christmas parties enquiries hence why we waited. We have 10 rooms so are the biggest escape game in London and allow competition for 50 people at the same time.

    1. You’re welcome, Daniela! Please keep in touch with more information.

      With ten rooms, might your site be the largest not just in London but wider still? Worth investigating!

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