Breakout Chester – Excalibur

We’d been looking forward to having a crack at Excalibur at Breakout Chester ever since it was announced back in October, so when we saw the opportunity to book in on opening day we jumped at it. Would we prove ourselves as knights worthy to wield the legendary sword of King Arthur, or would we be more like Brave Sir Robin…?

Either way we loved the place and it gets a

The Story:
You and your fellow knights have been kidnapped from Camelot and are being held captive in a tower whilst the intruders allege to be you. You’ll need to find a way out of the tower and make your way back to the round table and prove you are the true king by removing the sword from the stone…

Before we get to the room itself, I’d like to mention the journey to get there. Not the journey to Breakout Chester itself, but the journey inside Breakout Chester. That place is like a rabbit warren, and just when you think they’ve no more space to squeeze another room in they take you on a merry journey down to the depths and up to the heights of the building to places you had no idea existed. We were exhausted before we even started!

Once inside we found ourselves locked in adjacent cells, where a good mix of logic, searching, teamwork, plus a certain amount of physical dexterity proved to be the way forward. There was one particular bit here which made exceptional use of the geography of the building, and it wouldn’t have made a difference to the actual solution if it wasn’t there, but the fact that is was and had been incorporated was a really nice feature and surprise.

We’d taken ages in the cells, but we found one more puzzle to solve once we were out which we thankfully got through pretty painlessly before we moved on to the real heart of the room…

And what a heart it was! You could probably have a good guess what we found from the theme of the room, but we hadn’t expected something quite so large and functional. It’s not exactly something you could buy ‘off the shelf’, so I can’t imagine the planning and construction that went into the thing. Amazing.

Unfortunately, by this point we’d used a LOT of time and though we managed to get through the first couple of bits we ultimately ran out of time…

However…

The wonderful Breakout Chester staff very kindly gave us a little extra time to finish off as they told us we were right at the last bit, though this actually turned out to be quite a lot of extra time with an extra hint or three. Or four.

I think in this instance we were actually very fortunate that there was no-one booked in for the session after us or we’d probably never have been given the opportunity.

Plus, we were not only there on the room’s opening day we were actually the first paying customers in, so maybe they though it would be a good omen to kick off with a win (of sorts).

Plus, we’d actually taken the staff along a tub of Celebrations to celebrate the new room opening which we think may have unintentionally (honest!) worked as a bribe.

Whatever it was that brought us our good fortune we were extremely grateful for it and were able to complete the room in an embarrassingly long amount of time, though I’m happy to report it did all make sense once we’d got our heads round it.

Great room, highly recommended.

Result: Failed 

(But they let us finish with another 15 minutes or so, and LOTS of clues!)