The Escapement: The Pit (Margate)

Wow. Wow. Wow. What. A. Room!

Sent deep underground you and your team of miners will need to save the planet in this epic journey to the centre of the earth!

A great welcome and a well designed waiting room gives you an indication that you may be about to experience something special. This was our third room of the day at The Escapement after doing Pirates of Polaris and Egyptian Exodus, those were both great rooms and we hoped we had saved the best for last – spoiler alert…we had.

Our GM for The Pit was Dave (of ‘Squared’ fame from the Red Bull mindgamers) and he did an exceptional job all the way through. The experience begins before you even get in the room and Dave went to great lengths to explain the story and the mission we were there to complete, remaining in character the entire time. Basically this mining company has been a bit naughty and stopped the centre of the planet from spinning, it’s our job to get it going again.

Often you go to a room and get told you are going in a mine etc.. only to open a door and not go downstairs at all, not here, this room is in the basement which just adds to the immersion. Dave gave us our hardhats, which were fitted with very good torches, a walkie-talkie for communicating with him (he was going to be up top coordinating our mission), and as I was the designated health and safety officer I was given some added responsibilities.

We descended into the deep, dark pit and began our mission to save the world, no pressure. Stupidity on my part made the room a little harder at the start than it should have been, but fortunately Dave was keeping an eye on us from the surface and gave a little nudge in the right direction.

Everything in this room flowed and despite there being numerous things you could work on at the same time you were still never lost on where to go next. It really was like an adventure and the way that rooms were linked was a big wow factor and we probably found it far more fun that it should have been.

I don’t want to give anything away but this room has everything and we enjoyed every minute we spent in this room, even the ending was special and we didn’t see it coming. What a room.

Lewis, Mica and Dave have done an incredible job with this room, this really does feel like next level stuff, not just an escape room but an escape experience. There is normally at least one thing you could say you didn’t like about a room or where it could improve, but with this one there is nothing. It is perfect. Only one other room has got a perfect score from us and that was Lab Rat in LA which was ranked number 8 in the world by the Top Escape Rooms Project, so for us to give the same ranking to The Pit says a lot about the level of this room.

PUZZLES

Every single puzzle in this room was something that wouldn’t look out of place in a real mine and you could tell a lot of thought went into them. We completely missed one of the early puzzles, not because it was hard, but because we were so taken in with looking at everything else that was going on.

There was a good mixture of puzzles in this room and there was one that used a piece of technology that we haven’t seen used in a room before, but again, kept perfectly with the theme. Later on in the room things were a little bit more complicated and it took us some time to work out the answer, but it all made sense.

IMMERSION/ROOM DESIGN

We often talk about immersion and how a room may or may not accomplish it. We’ve done rooms before where we feel immersed yet there are padlocks or tech that weren’t part of the theme, at the time you don’t question it and get on with the room but then when you look back you actually wonder if they could have done something better. That wasn’t the case with The Pit, they took it to the next level. Even now looking back at the room retrospectively trying to think of anything that was out of place and there was nothing, literally nothing. Everything in this room added to the feeling that you were in a mine.

GM/CLUE SYSTEM

Dave was in character the entire time when giving us timely nudges and had we asked for clues we have no doubt they would have been in character too. Clues and nudges were delivered via walkie-talkies which was perfectly in keeping with the theme of the room.

ANYTHING ELSE

This is a great room and should definitely be added to your list. We completed it as a two person team in around 53 minutes, but this isn’t a room to rush, this is one to savour and would definitely work with bigger teams.

The Escapement want people to enjoy their rooms and see them through to completion so they say that time isn’t important. Yes they say you have 60 minutes to escape but it sounds like if you needed two hours you would still get it – not many companies would do that!

Success/Failed

Final Rating: 

Team Size: 2 people

Address: 65 Northdown Rd, Margate CT9 2RJ

Website: https://escapementmargate.co.uk