My husband is obsessed with Hickory’s Smokehouse. Like seriously obsessed. His favourite is the one in Chester so there was no question about taking him there for his birthday. I wanted an escape room nearby for a little fun beforehand and so choose Breakout Chester. It has a really good location right near the centre of the city, about a ten minute walk from Hickory’s and the river, and I really like the variety of the rooms offered.
We’ve done a few escape rooms in the past to varying levels of success. Most rooms are designed to be solved by 5/6 people and there’s just the two of us so a lot depends upon how much we argue that particular day. We do love trying to solve puzzles though so were very excited to try a new company.
Breakout Chester has 9 different rooms to choose from, all with different themes and levels of ability. Since it was James’ birthday, I let him decide (for once) and he went with an Indiana Jones inspired Forgotten Tomb. Each room is really well described on the website with difficulty level and some have little notes. Ours said that the room requires physical agility from at least one team member (One room says that there is a clown during Halloween. I won’t be going in that room!!).
Booking online was really straightforward and easy. It would be easier if they accepted paypal or apple pay so that I didn’t have to find my bank card but I’m guessing it helps keep costs down. Prices were very reasonable. Some escape rooms penalise you by charging more if your group is smaller but Breakout wasn’t that bad. For two players it’s £20 per person as opposed to £15 per person if you have the full team of 5. £20 per person is still a very good price though. Some charge upwards of £60 per room.
We got clear instructions before the day, informing us to be at the location at least 10 minutes before our start time. We were met by a very friendly Cameron who was our game operator. He went through the entire process with us, asked us how we’d like to handle clues (yes please, if it looks like we’re struggling), explained the back story then we were off. I got to wear an explorer hat too, accessories are always good. Escape rooms always take a few minutes to get going but once we did it was a lot of fun.
The puzzles were challenging but possible to solve with a bit of work and I really loved how varied the type of challenges were. We were kept on our toes with a number of surprises that we really weren’t expecting, some of them seriously clever in design. That’s all I’m going to tell you about the actual room. Suffice to say, we had a lot of fun and we got out with exactly 4 minutes and 54 seconds to spare. We did get a few clues to help us but Cameron was so good at only helping us when we were really struggling or if we asked. it didn’t feel like we were at that much of a disadvantage with two people at a game designed for 5 because we had Cameron to help when we needed.
We had such a great experience at Breakout Chester that I would definitely recommend it. Next time we’re in the area it will be on the to do list. It was such a fun experience and there was nothing at all that I could fault. It just left me wanting to try out the other rooms (we walked past an open door to the zombie themed Dead End and it looked so good).
I rate Breakout Chester a solid 5/5.
We visited Breakout Chester on 21/05/2023