Wirral Escape Rooms – The Curse of the Golden Lion (Second Visit)
Room #049
Venue: Wirral Escape Rooms
The Team: TDM, Mr Carrot, JM
Date: 17/11/2018
This turned out to be a bit of an unexpected bonus for us…
We’d actually visited Wirral Escape Rooms just to play their seasonal Christmas Confusion, but as we’d done so well in there we were very kindly offered another chance to play their Curse of the Golden Lion room which we’d first encountered back in January right after it had opened.
We’d loved it and had given it a Golden Disco Ball of Awesome Escapiness, but the room has been tweaked and honed quite a bit since then though and we felt it’d definitely be fun to see exactly what changes and improvements had been made.
Last time we’d escaped with a time of 58 minutes and managed to snaffle just one of Hathaway’s bonus items, so seeing as we already knew the basics of the room, even with some differences the pressure was still on to at least improve on that!
Oh, and jumping ahead slightly with a small spoiler, yes it definitely still deserves a…
The Story:
Famous adventurer Hathaway Brown has mysteriously contacted you. Being past his prime he has picked you and your team for a very important mission… Hathaway once spent some time in the Jungles of South America, where he claims he found the Golden Lion. The only problem is, he left it in his jungle shack, which was padlocked up in a way that only Hathaway could execute… with puzzles & riddles!
Now Hathaway is a bit down on his luck, and needs that Golden Lion back… Only someone of outstanding wit, with an adventurer’s heart and a keen brain could solve the puzzles, reclaim the Golden Lion and escape the curse… Are you brave enough to answer the call of adventure?
This was the first time I’d made a second visit to an Escape Room, and to feel like I should be confident and yet at the same time so unsure of what to expect was quite a strange experience.
For the most part, it was of course extremely familiar as several of the original puzzles were still in the same form as they were previously. This meant that we made rapid progress early on as thankfully everything came flooding back.
I think the most noticeable changes were that one element of general searching had been removed so the info was more freely available and this streamlining worked well, and a new part had been added further into the room that required having to interact vocally with the environment. This kind of thing always makes me laugh as I always feel like such an idiot doing it, but it does add enormously to the fun. It was certainly one of the most memorable and enjoyable bits for me, and in a room that’s consistently this good that quite an achievement!
I’m pleased to say that with the huge potential to utterly embarrass ourselves by doing worse than last time, we actually managed a pretty respectable time and made off with all four of Hathaway’s knickknacks.
I’m even more pleased to say that not only is the room as good as I remember it being the first time round, but it’s actually improved. Can’t really award it another Disco Ball, but as you can see above, we’ve taken the last one and buffed it up shiny!
Fantastic room.
Result: Escaped with all 4 bonus items in 43 minutes
(Though seeing as it was our second time here it would have been embarrassing if we hadn’t!)
