Lakes Escapes Workington – Santa’s Naughty Or Nice List

The Story:
It’s a month before Christmas and you have just found out you are on the Naughty List. You want something other than coal for Christmas, so you decide to sneak into Santa’s office and put your name onto the Nice List. Mrs Claus is in the kitchen baking cookies and Santa is outside feeding the reindeers so you must hurry before he returns and catches you otherwise you will be destined to remain on the Naughty List forever.

This is where things got serious. Being on the naughty list forever is no joke, so we had everything to play for here. We couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty trying to get one over on Santa, but needs must…

Santa’s Naughty Or Nice List is a temporary room set up just for the Christmas period, and this meant that Lakes Escapes had had to remove one of their other rooms, Baker Street, to fit it in. Don’t let its transitory nature let you think that it’s any less of a room though, as there was definitely some challenging fun to be had.

We donned our Santa hats and got our briefing from John, who also told us there was an extra little side challenge in the room of finding small hidden wooden cut out Christmas shapes. I think there were about 20 to find in total, and (SPOILER ALERT) we failed miserably, though to be fair some were a little sneaky! OK, not much of a spoiler, but to make up for it and to add an air of suspense I’ll not reveal how badly we failed until the end of the review*.

We got off to quite a bad start as true to form we were flummoxed by the first incredibly easy puzzle we encountered, which was supposed to give us an easy beginning. A small pointer and a couple of slapped foreheads of realisation later, and we were making progress.

There was a nice blend of searching and puzzles in the room including what must have been a couple of specially constructed items, and the Christmas theme was well maintained throughout.

We did get stuck at another point by over complicating one of the puzzles. We were reading far too much into it, when the simplest possibility proved to be the correct answer. Another ‘DOH!’ or realisation there!

Overall it’s a great room especially for families and also considering that it’s only temporary. Sadly it’ll probably be removed a couple of days after this review is published so Baker Street can be put back in (though that does give us an excuse to head back up there). Who knows, it may return next year.

As far as our attempt at Yuletide espionage went though, I’m pleased to say that we did eventually succeed and Santa was none the wiser, so a Happy Christmas in a fun room for us then.

Ho Ho Ho!

*I think we maybe got about 13 of the 20 shapes… I know, pretty poor…