Cliffhanger Rooms Newby Bridge – The Pharaohs Curse
Room: The Pharaohs Curse
The Team: TDM, Mr Carrot
Date: 24/12/2017
We’d stopped off for the evening in Kendal while heading north, and having some time spare the next morning before heading off again we nipped over to the Cliffhanger Rooms at Newby Bridge to see if they could fit us in. We were lucky as there was a free slot for The Pharaohs Curse in a couple of hours, so we went for a leisurely breakfast at the Cafe Ambio at the Lakeland Motor Museum, and had a wander round the village before heading back.
The Story:
An incredible discovery in Egypt!
The recent discovery of a pyramid, presumably the resting place of a long-forgotten Pharaoh, has set the world’s imagination afire. Rumours of treasure and unimaginable wealth have been circulating in the media. You assembled a team of leading archaeologists to join you on your mission to reach the inner tomb and discover the identity of this mysterious Egyptian king.
Many teams have ventured into the pyramid before, but none have escaped. The mysterious disappearance of these explorers has led many to believe the Pharaoh had his burial chamber cursed.
You must discover the inner tomb, identify the Pharaoh, and escape within 60 minutes, or else you too may fall victim to the Pharaoh’s curse!
The Cliffhanger Rooms is in one of the most unusual and picturesque locations I’ve encountered for an Escape Room, and the stone built building it inhabits is also very different to what I’ve seen before and adds to the charm of the place.
On entering the building we found the usual toilet and waiting area facilities, and it was only a few moments before we were led back outside to where the entrance to our room was located. Once inside the room, our host explained the background story to us and that rather than escape being the goal, we were instead to find the identity of the Pharaoh.
Our start location was the dig site, which eventually led to the pyramid and the tomb itself. There was a very nice variety of puzzles, which unusually for us we actually found not too difficult. There was only one that we really got stuck on, and we used the clue system which is simply a button to ask for help. It only took a few words on the TV screen to explain what we we missing and it all seemed so obvious! As I recall, you can have as many clues as you want, but you are limited to two if you want to grab yourself a place on the leaderboard.
Another of the puzzles was more of a physical challenge – nothing strenuous, more of a hand/eye co-ordination thing, and something that we’d encountered before but with a slightly different take. Mr Carrot had tried it last time due to where we’d been positioned in different cells, so this time was my turn. I skillfully proved myself to be just as useless as he’d been, so I was grateful that I got so many attempts that stubborn perseverance paid off.
Plus a little luck. Well… lots of luck.
On the whole we made pretty good time, and upon finally identifying the Pharaoh and completing the room were rewarded with a tongue in cheek surprise which certainly made us smile and was a great end to a really fun experience.
The Cliffhanger Rooms aren’t exactly round the corner for us to get to, but I definitely enjoyed The Pharaohs Curse enough to be planning another trip up that way for the other rooms at some point in the hopefully not too distant future.
