*Spoiler alert* – there is no wine!
It’s 1840 and you are a guest at one of Thomas Cooke’s famous banquets. As usual the wine is flowing, and Thomas is bragging about the rare treasures him and his family have acquired from around the globe. Except tonight he accidentally let slip the location of where they keep those treasures.
You have spiked his drink with a sedative, which knocks him out cold for 60 minutes! Enter the Wine Cellar, crack the puzzles to gain access to and steal the treasures before he wakes!
Our fourth and final room of the day at Escape Peterborough was another one at their Peterborough Museum location. We’d completed The Hunt early and had some time to kill, as there is no formal waiting room we went up to the museum cafe and had a hot chocolate while we waited for the previous team to finish and the room to be reset.
Our GM collected us just as we were finishing our drinks (perfect timing) and lead us down to the vaults once again. He took us into the room and gave us the usual health and safety briefing and then the room specific briefing. The room briefing was a bit different as he had to list out things that weren’t part of the room and weren’t to be touched, certain wine bottles, pipes etc… As soon as our GM finished the briefing he informed us that our time would begin as soon as the door closed behind him.
First impressions of the room were decent, it looked very much like a wine cellar so they clearly chose the theme to fit the room. It had that dusty and musty smell that you come to expect from these type of places. With the room briefing still running around our heads it took a few moments for us to take everything in and work out what was off limits and what wasn’t.
PUZZLES
Being located in a historic location means you have to expect certain limitations to what can be done within the space. These limitations basically ruled out a lot of tech so the room was reliant on padlocks. Every puzzle was about finding a combination to a padlock, however each puzzle was related to the theme.
There wasn’t much searching involved but you did need to have a good look around and look at things closely to find what you needed. Generally this was a linear room with pretty standard observational puzzles and some maths thrown in for good measure.
One puzzle involved one of my favourite escape room items, but it became quite hard to know exactly where to use this and as such we wasted a lot of time trying to find something which was arguably quite obvious (in hindsight anyway).
IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN
The real winner here is the vault itself, the history of this place is probably pretty amazing and it would have been great if they could have made a little bit more of it. There is a spare room in the vault but when we were there it was made up like a WW2 era shelter, with no light and was just a place to dump personal possessions.
One has to accept certain limitations when playing a room in a historic location so that has to factor in to your expectations here. There were no surprises, nothing special, but it worked and for the most part the room flowed.
Our only gripe would be the lighting level, at times it was far too low to see what we needed to see, Liz even had to resort to getting out her phone torch at one point as it was impossible to see – difficulty by darkness is not a puzzle.
There was one part of the room which we weren’t sure if it was broken, if something was missed, or if it was just a decoy, but something was padlocked but there was no screws securing the other end so the item could simply be opened. I assume it was a choice to throw you off but if just adds doubt and I’d prefer to see it removed completely to remove that suspicion of it being a broken prop.
It was clear to see from the start what you were working towards so it was nice when you got the jewel as you knew that this was the ending and your mission was complete – it was a rather impressive ‘jewel’ too!
GM/CLUE SYSTEM
There was a small camera in the room so unlike The Hunt where you weren’t constantly watched, our GM was able to keep track of where we were.
Clues and the countdown timer were displayed using a projector which projected onto the only clear wall in the room. We needed one clue as we struggled to find something, this was likely because of the room briefing which told us what we could and couldn’t interact with and threw us off.
ANYTHING ELSE
This room won’t blow you away but we did have fun, just not as much as at their other location. The star of the show was the vault itself, the room was an adequate way to spend 30 minutes.
Success/Failed
Final Rating:
| Operation | |
| Puzzles | |
| Room Design | |
| GM/Clues | |
| Excitement |
Team: 2 players
Address: Peterborough Museum & Art Gallery Priestgate, Peterborough, PE1 1LF
Website: https://www.escape-peterborough.co.uk
*Disclaimer: we weren’t charged for these tickets, but this has not influenced our review.
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