Houdini’s Escape Room Experience Cheshire Oaks: Escape from R.M.S. Titanic

‘Immersive’ is a worrying term for a game based on the sinking of the Titanic, but fortunately they don’t take things as far as plunging players into the icy waters of the Atlantic. Instead, this game places the players in an upper class berth on the doomed ship, just as it begins to sink.

Houdini Escape excel at providing a good experience before and after the game, starting from the atmospheric lobby and the mini-cinema used for game briefings. I particularly admired the way they use a simple...

Let’s talk about climaxes. The one thing all good games shouldn’t do these days is to leave you unsure whether you have actually completed it. It definitely shouldn’t be dependent on the GM walking in and telling you. 

As it turns out, the room has a lot going for it. It sprawls over several rooms (well, "cabins"), it looks fairly realistic (except for lack of motion, I guess) and proposes a few tasks I had never performed before (something I always appreciate after playing so many rooms). There are many references to real-life details in the puzzles, to the point where Titanic experts would probably be able to circumvent a puzzle or two. Yet, having said all that...

I had never heard of Houdini Escape rooms before, so when it was suggested that we do one of their rooms, I was unsure what to expect but was up for the challenge. They have multiple locations around the country and with Southampton closest we headed there and it seemed only apt to do the Titanic room. When we arrived we were greeted by the nicest host/games master who i'm so sorry but I don't remember his name. He is an absolute credit to the Houdini team. His passion and enthusiasm for his job was clear to see and he really made the whole experience, from checking in to escaping that much more fun and entertaining.

Houdinis Escape Onslow Road Southampton: Titanic

November 2022

Overview 

This was Second visit to Houdini’s in Southampton after visiting the their Tenpin location earlier in the day taking on Extinct. We had booked in at their Onslow Road location for what is arguably the best rated escape room in the country, Titanic. This was our first 90 minute room. There is a car park nearby where you then have a 2 minute walk to the location so not too bad at all. The reception area is decorated as you would expect for an old immersive experience but it is not as grand as the Tenpin location. You are given an iPad to complete your information details and sign waivers. We were taken to an old cinema style room with popcorn machine and cinema screen ready to show us our brief. 

Room impression

The room is up to 7 people, however, we would not recommend going with a group of that size. Some of the areas in the game are quite tight and as a team of 4 we did struggle a little bit in some parts. The set of the game is as you would expect, fully immersive and completely in keeping with what task we were taking on. We would say that some of the props and games in the room were starting to look a little tired and were not as impressive as Extinct that we had done earlier in the day. In saying that, they had done a brilliant job in creating an immersive experience that we did all enjoy. 

Puzzles

At the beginning of the game we found it quite easy to split up and tackle a few games on our own but as the experience went on, the games did become linear. As previously mentioned, some spaces were quite tight and this left some of our team stood watching whilst others were attempting the solve some puzzles. This put a little dampener on the experience for us and with much bigger teams, we can imagine this being quite a big issue. There were a lot of hide and seek games during the experience and at the beginning a few padlocks were to be found but on the whole, the puzzles were varied and fun throughout. It did take us a while to work out that when we did get a puzzle right, a ship’s bell would ring. We’ve not experienced this before and it was a nice touch to add to the immersive experience. 

Game Master Clues

We can’t remember asking for any help during Titanic. Our games master did keep a watchful eye on us and if we steered slightly off track then a foghorn would sound which let us know we needed to have a little re-think. We were told that if we needed a clue all we had to do was ask and she would have came over on the speaker system. 

Round Up

We had high expectations of this room and to the large part it did not disappoint. A lot of effort has gone into making one of biggest tragedies in human history a tasteful experience. You could see that game was starting to look a little tired on some of the puzzles that will probably need addressing at some point but it kind of added to the history of it all. This game is a must when visiting Houdini’s Southampton.