The Great Escape

So what do you do when you have a new team to work with and want to find out what their strengths are? You take on an escape game! Funny enough, I was on Facebook when I saw the advertisement for The Great Escape. Sometimes it is a bit scary when that happens…
Anyway, I was originally just going to book the game for us, but after looking on their website, I discovered that they do corporate team building events in partnership with another company, Intrinsic Links. Intrinsic Links does a session beforehand and book you in for a 45 minute escape game. There is also the option to book a celebration afterwards at one of five venues.
We walked over to The Great Escape and to be honest, I don’t know that I would have found it as it doesn’t really stand out. There was a car park at the entrance of the building, but because of the bollards, I’m not sure that is for customers. Don’t worry, there is the Sidney Street Car Park just past the building. There is a buzzer at the front door so someone will come down to greet you and guide you up to their office.
The office area is a bit small if you do show up with a large group, fortunately there were only four of us. They have a bench area where you can store your personal items. There is a waiver to read… you know the whole «if you get hurt or die, it’s not our fault» waiver. They do have you e-​sign rather than sign a piece of paper. They explain the rules and give you some tips, for example make sure that you double check everything so if it didn’t work the first time, have another team mate try it. Also, no destruction of the room. This may seem common sense to you and me, but apparently a number of the rooms have been damaged as people thought there were clues inside the walls and have punched holes in the walls.
We did the Mad Scientist Room, which is the room for beginners. All I can say is if that was the easy room, I can’t imagine what the other rooms are like, although I guess there is the fact that you will have experience from the beginners room and will know what to look for. I will not say much more so as not to spoil it for others, but we all enjoyed ourselves and were quite impressed with the details that go into something like this. And yes, we did escape the room in 40 minutes. I have to say, I was a bit skeptical of how people could do this for fun, but I think we’re all keen to come back and try out a more difficult room!
There are four different rooms: Mad Scientist, Alcatraz, Placebo, and Homicide. Some rooms can be booked with as little as two people, while others have a minimum of three people. The rooms show that the maximum is 7 people, but when you look at pricing, it looks like the maximum is 6 people. The price per person is under £20 and obviously, the more people, the less per person it is. If you are going with the corporate team building package, then you will need to contact Intrinsic Links for more information and costs.