Escape Rooms Cheltenham: Show Me The Honey (Cheltenham)

Wholesome family fun

It’s the annual honey harvest festival and every year bees from around the UK compete to be the best hive in the country. It’s judgement day – but you’ve just arrived at work to find a rival hive has stolen our hard earned honey! You’ll need to try and collect as much honey as you can from around the hive before the judges arrive in an hours time.

Complete the main hive duties in time, and you’ll have the chance to visit the break room, and complete more difficult challenges to access the other bees’ personal stashes.

Back in January 2024 we had visited Escape Rooms Cheltenham to play their Cheese Robbers game, and as much as we did have a good time, we just didn’t really gel with it. Fast forward to 2025 and a new game has opened in its place, Show Me the Honey. We’d heard some good things about it, and as we were planning a little trip up north to play some games, we decided to stop in to Cheltenham to see what the buzz was all about (yes, that was a bee pun, and I apologise for nothing).

We arrived at the venue and were greeted warmly by our hosts Megan (the owner) and Damian. I think Show Me the Honey has its own little waiting area, as it was themed with bees. I would go on the assumption that there are more waiting areas in this venue, but both times we’ve been there we’ve been in this area, so I can’t comment on that. In this waiting area, we were given the health and safety briefing by our host, Damien.

Damien gave us a good run down of what to do in case of an emergency – make a bee-line for the exit (ok, I’ll stop), and then explained our mission. It felt like there was a lot to take in for this mission, but once we got in the game, it all made sense. We donned our bee antenna headset (one has to blend in in the hive) and then we were shown into the hive.

A bonus thing about this room is that there is a regular portion to it, and then extra puzzles for those who have the time – winning! It also seems like a very accessible venue and I can’t recall any steps to get into the building or the game (perhaps one step into the main building, maybe).

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

Essentially, Show Me the Honey is a collection game. A game where there are lots of puzzles and things to do, but you don’t have to do everything to complete your mission. The early part of the game is on the easier side to make it accessible for everyone, but the break room is where things change and become arguably more challenging. But you don’t have to access the break room to complete the main mission.

The set was lovely, and I could definitely see it being popular with families. Lots of honeycomb patterns, bright colours, bees, and some enjoyable background music made for a pleasant time in the hive.

We played as a team of two, but thanks to the spacious set, I would imagine larger teams would still be quite comfortable in here, although there were a couple of areas where space was at more of a premium, and with lots of honey to find, splitting up and checking everywhere is never a bad strategy.

PUZZLES

Being a collection game, there was a good amount of content and you earn points according to how long you have left from the hour, and how many pieces of honey you find. In the end I believe we got around 432 points, but there were three pieces of honey that we missed (dammit) – and two of them we definitely should have got, but the last was trixie so not sure we’d have found that one even with an extra hour.

So obviously searching was a big part of this game (great side quest for kids?), but on top of that: observation, pattern recognition, wordplay, logic, skill and perhaps some basic maths – plenty for the whole family! We found the puzzles to be fair, well signposted, and a joy to solve. Once solved, they mostly resulted in combinations for padlocks, but there was still some tech to keep us guessing.

The main hive was quite open and we could solve things along a couple of different puzzle paths, but the break room was totally linear, which was a good way to bring the team back together and have everyone focussed on one thing.

There were plenty of bee related puns (see, it’s not just me) and while they added a nice element of humour to the game, they also helped make even some random puzzles feel like they fitted in nicely.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Although Megan was there at the start, Damien was our host and GM, and he did a wonderful job. The briefing was enthusiastic and fun, and the debrief, where our honey got counted, was suspenseful (and frustrating when we realised we’d missed a few).

If we needed a clue we simply had to give Damien a ‘buzz’ (that was his pun, not mine), and then a clue would appear on the screen. This screen also contained a timer so we knew how long we had left. We could (and perhaps should) have stayed in the room right up until our 60 minutes was up, but as we thought we had all the honey, we decided to end our time early – bonus tip – check everywhere, and check again!

ANYTHING ELSE

We had a lovely time in Show Me the Honey, and this is one of those rare games that can keep both newbies and enthusiasts occupied thanks to the bonus area of puzzles. Perhaps not the most challenging, but certainly light-hearted family fun!

Success / Failure

Final Rating:

Team: 2 players

Address: 52 Winchcombe St, Cheltenham GL52 2ND

Website: https://escaperoomscheltenham.co.uk/