The top 10 escape rooms to visit this half term – from spell-binding potion labs to a WW2 submarine
Want to challenge the kids this half term? Puzzle solved!
We’ve scoured the country to find the best escape rooms.
The Lost Passenger — Mission: Breakout in Kentish Town, London
Set inside the former South Kentish Town Underground station — which has been closed since 1924 — is the most immersive escape game we’ve ever experienced and sees players descend beneath London’s streets and scramble behind the scenes of a very spooky tube station.
While many escape rooms are filled with random padlocks and paper-thin plots in unconvincing settings, everything here fits with the internal logic of the game.
Immersive storytelling, logical puzzles using real-world props, and genuine scares in an authentic (and dusty) setting make this a must for urban explorers and fans of classic horror.
- Difficulty: 7/10
- Time to escape: 60 mins
- Our team size: 2
- Our escape time: 55m 37s
- Best for: Ghost busters and train spotters
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Temple Quest — Clue Cracker in Tunbridge Wells, Kent
Perfect for kids of the ‘80s, summons up the spirit of Spielberg with this very physical escape room, filled with pre-Columbian ruins littered with human remains.
Channeling The Crystal Maze’s Aztec Zone, players will feel like Lara Croft or Indiana Jones as they navigate by the stars with sand underfoot, and tackle hands-on challenges and ancient traps.
Just like a summer blockbuster, the thrills come thick and fast throughout, while fans of The Goonies will have their minds blown when they uncover a certain silver screen-inspired artefact.
Clue Cracker offers two other fantastic rooms too.
- Difficulty: 6/10
- Time to escape: 60 minutes
- Our team size: 2
- Our escape time: 53m 21s
- Best for: Overgrown Goonies
Spellcraft — Tulleys Escape Rooms and Games in Crawley, West Sussex
Any one of Tulleys’ five excellent rooms could have made our top-ten list, with their horror-themed (and incredibly difficult) game, Nethercott Manor, being a firm favourite among escape enthusiasts.
Splitting your group in half, with one group beginning in a sorcerer’s sweet shop and the other in an arcane potions laboratory, Spellcraft pits light against dark and sees wand-wielding players both co-operating and competing with each other as it warps you from one fantastical setting to the next. Pure magic.
- Difficulty: 9/10
- Time to escape: 60m
- Our team size: 2
- Our escape time: 59m 58s
- Best for: Ravenclaws and Slytherins
Magna Carta Murder — Escape the Towers in Canterbury, Kent
Step inside and you will be charged with thwarting a heist that takes place in a real-life working museum.
By day, the city’s iconic gatehouse functions as a gallery showcasing its collection of historical artefacts.
Expect a narrative-driven adventure filled with surprises, special effects, and the wrath of the thunder god.
Set inside a real former bank vault, you’ll hack security systems and cameras, dodge lasers, and override the vault to fill your swag bag with as much loot as possible before your time runs out… but if you don’t get that diamond you’ll be fitted for concrete boots.
The room design feels authentic throughout, and the many diverse puzzles range from easy to mind-melting, but they are always fair.
Best for groups of four or more.
Appropriately set within a bomb shelter transformed into a secret laboratory, with sound-and-lighting cues executed with professional West End theatrical equipment, the whole dieselpunk production is littered with sci-fi easter eggs, referencing everything from The Terminator to Windows 95.
You’ll need fast-thinking and a quick trigger to defeat the AI’s final form. Hasta la vista, baby.
The U-boat setting makes for an atmospheric, tense experience, while the large space (taking up the entire ground floor of Compendium’s premises) and the fact you can tackle — or abandon — puzzles in any order makes this a great game for teams of up to 12 players.
- Difficulty: 7/10
- Time to escape: 60m
- Our team size: 3
- Loot taken: 48/52
- Best for: Puzzle pirates
Loot the Lanes — Pier Pressure in Brighton, East Sussex
This subterranean escape room immediately wows visitors by accurately recreating a parade of typically Brighton shops, all crammed incredibly into the basement of a local café.
- Difficulty: 9/10
- Time to escape: 60m
- Our team size: 2
- Our escape time: 59m 57s
- Best for: Criminal masterminds
Plan 52 — ClueQuest in King’s Cross, London
One of the UK’s exit game pioneers, ClueQuest is escape-room megastore with multiple copies of each of its four rooms, which all revolve around the same secret agent theme united by a common nemesis, Professor BlackSheep.
Thanks to its ingenious Honey-I-Shrunk-the-Kids production design, CQ Origenes is a firm favourite with many escapologists, but we think the spacious, straightforward is still their best game.
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It may not be as flashy, and the office theme might not blow your mind, but the puzzles are fun, challenging and logical, and not as prone to failure as their high-tech games.
- Difficulty: 7/10
- Time to escape: 60m
- Our team size: 2
- Our escape time: 57m 32s
- Best for: Codebreakers and spy kids