Escape Hunt Manchester: Worlds Collide

We came to this room for a birthday treat for a Doctor Who fan’s birthday, and sadly, it thoroughly disappointed. To start with, we were waiting nearly half an hour after our booking time to go in. We were told that there was some broken tech in the room, but not to worry as the game was fixed and was now in full working order! Also, that we wouldn’t be penalised for time and would still get our full time. Well, thank goodness for that!! We were greeted at the door by Scott, who was lovely, upbeat and really got us in the mood. And we got into the room and our immediate impression was good - it was quite a good looking room and we set to trying to solve puzzles. Unfortunately, from this point our experience just went from bad to worse. At all sorts of points either the tech didn’t work properly, or bits of the game were missing completely, or our host was not paying attention to our gameplay and had failed to notice exactly where we were in the game (at more than one point a puzzle had been solved for about 5 minutes, before suddenly “the game” caught up!); often the problem was a combination of these. After muddling through with all sorts of ongoing issues and things not triggering or working properly, we eventually reached a point near the end of the game where we needed an item that we were *repeatedly* saying was not where it should be. At which point the host told us on the audio that this malfunction often happened and to just play on without the object. As we tried to complete the final set piece, though, we were repeatedly prompted to use this missing object and were sent round and round in circles for ages, trying to solve the final puzzle without it. It was increasingly frustrating and actually made a couple of us rather cross as we always like to try and beat a leaderboard time, and time was ticking away. This should never have been allowed to happen. Eventually the end of the game triggered, and we were able to exit, in a very anticlimactic way, to be met by a different host - Hannah, who was I think the one who had taken us through the game itself. I think, without us being rude (I actually apologised for having got a bit annoyed inside the room towards the end!), we made obvious that we had not had a good time. Now, maybe she was having an off day; but, instead of an apology, and an attempt to make up to us our wasted time and money, she just seemed uninterested and said that the broken things “happen all the time”. When a venue has just taken over £130 from team for an hour’s play you really don’t expect such poor service. We have also yet to receive our team photo. This room was such an incredible disappointment, with only one star awarded for the set dressing and theming of the room, and another half for Scott enthusiasm at the start. It really was scraping the bottom of the barrel though and I wouldn’t go back to this Manchester venue of Escape Hunt, however well their other games are rated. Definitely avoid.