ClueQuest Plan52, Spoiler Free Escape Room Review
Advert: this experience was gifted by ClueQuest, this has not affected our opinion.
My head is so full of board game rules that I don’t have room for other less important information. Such as when my children were born, or, as is the more pertinent thing here, days I have booked off work. It turns out, that when we purchased tickets to an evening show in London I decided to take the entire day off work as holiday. Some pesky, but important, board game rule made me forget to tell anyone about this amazing foresight. Fast forward to a week before and I am kindly reminded to check that I can leave early that day, so that I am not late for the show only to discover I had the whole day off to spend with my family!
I like to make the most of my trips to London. A combination of parking and train fares means I want to maximise the bang for my buck so I looked up Escape Rooms in London and tried to seek out a good one for us to try. ClueQuest Escape Rooms came highly recommended and a quick look on a map showed that it was withing walking distance of St Pancras station, an easy and direct destination for us to get to. I emailed them and despite the short notice they accommodated us.
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We opted for Plan52, a spy-based Escape Room, and the first of many rooms created at the venue. We received a warm welcome and a place to sit, while we filled out the relevant forms. All the games seem to revolve around a yellow mouse called ‘Mr Q’. The waiting room had a cool vibe about it that referenced the mouse, including cute little doors leading to other little doors in the wall.
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We were lead to the room to begin our mission and found out that we needed to find the identity of a double-agent. Staff were in a corporate uniform rather than any thematic clothing that you get with some other Escape Rooms. Although a bit cringey, I always appreciate the attempt of setting the mood before you begin in this way.
Inside the room there were plenty of puzzles. It was a more non-linear room than some. What this means is that you can get clues that aren’t relevant until much later. With my boys, I slightly prefer a more definitive route where progression is a little more obvious. That said, we fared pretty well.
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I see a recurring fault in our family team. We like to allow the kids to solve and discover clues and codes along the way. As adults what we are poor at is double-checking that in the excitement they haven’t missed anything else that might have needed to be discovered, such as an item left in a drawer. We may or may not learn from this. It certainly isn’t the first time we have missed something obvious from the excitement of discovering one thing and not investigating further than that. As a result we did need a handful of clues along the way, but these were delivered in a non-obvious way which was appreciated.
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The coded locks had a nice futuristic appeal to them. It certainly helped when we discovered a way of working out how many digits were required, as it varied. Despite a couple of hiccups of not searching things properly we found out the identity and appearance of the double-agent in a reasonable time – about 50 minutes.
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On the walk back along the canal to King’s Cross station we all agreed that it was a really fun escape room. I think it lacked a little bit of styling that others we have done offered. There wasn’t anything particularly groundbreaking in the room either when viewed through today’s lens. However, considering this is thirteen years old it held up really well and still offered us a challenge and plenty of fun! It is well worth a visit if you are in the area and I am certainly keen to return to try out some of their other rooms soon. I just need to remember if I have any more days off in London!
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We then headed off to the West End to watch our show, that was actually on at Olympia – curse those board game rules for making us forget the venue!
In case you were interested, we went to see Come Alive! which boasts music from The Greatest Showman. There was an abundance of AI slop around the pre-show areas and the show lacked a sensible storyline, but it was a fun spectacle and the singing was brilliant. As big fans of the movie, we all had a thoroughly enjoyable time.
Key Facts
Location: Islington, London
Time: 60 minutes
Our Team: 3 adults, 2 children (15 & 12)
Website: https://cluequest.co.uk/
Reviewer’s Note
For clarity: we don’t get paid for our reviews. I did receive a free escape room experience in exchange for my honest opinion. We have tried not to let this affect our review in any way.
