Pier Pressure Smuggler’s Secret, Spoiler-free Escape Room Review
The lure of a bank holiday Monday and my eldest son’s 18th Birthday saw us bask in the Spring sunshine in Brighton. After a little browse of the offerings of the North Laines we headed to the main event. We had booked in as a family to try out our first Pier Pressure escape room: Smuggler’s Secret.
They have very kindly given me an exclusive discount code for 10% off any of their rooms to share with you. Just use this code when booking on the Pier Pressure website: BGR10.
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I’d booked into Smuggler’s Secret as the theme and difficulty level appealed to me for my family. But there were a host of games to choose from. But yaaargh I find a pirate theme akin to the song of a siren and I couldn’t resist.
We arrived and were cordially greeted by our host. After leaving valuables in a locker, visiting the rest room and taking off our jumpers we were greeted again by our host looking much more like a pirate. In character we were lead up to the room, entering what had the appearance of the inside of a log cabin.
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The backstory of John Olliver, the local wealthy miller, was duly delivered by our host and introduced to our parrot helper. The sand timer was started and we were off collecting clues and gathering info on our surroundings.
We got a key quickly and with only one padlock you would think this would be the perfect start, but Harrison said it wouldn’t work, I looked in the low light and without my glasses and assumed he was correct. We weren’t, the key fit and fortunately a clever clogs in our team tried again a few minutes later and we were back up and running.
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Generally the game followed a nice arc, with one puzzle leading to the next. I did solve one clue before we were meant to, which meant solving a puzzle, we already had the answer to. It felt counterintuitive, but I see why the host made us get the answer the correct way.
I would say as a team we needed a few clues. One was because I didn’t empty out all the contents of a cupboard… whoops! Without one of the clues I think I could’ve been in the room all day and not solved it, we had all the parts, but none of the acumen to put it together. That’s what clues are for, and equally you don’t want challenges to be too easy either.
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Overall, the feeling of being clever from solving clues far outweighed the feeling of being dumb, which is always a relief. Smuggler’s Secret may not have been my favourite escape room to date, but it was definitely very good and it has left me keen to try some of their others. Perhaps I will use that exclusive 10% off discount code myself and head back to the seaside town!
Key Facts
Location: Brighton, East Sussex
Time: 55 minutes
Our Team: 2 adults, 3 children
Website: https://pierpressure.co.uk/brighton/escape-room/the-smugglers-secret
Don’t forget to use our exclusive
discount code: BGR10
Reviewer’s Note
For clarity: we don’t get paid for our reviews. I got a discounted entry to the escape room. We have tried not to let this affect our review in any way.
