Our escape room weekend's final room was Journey To Atlantis, the other room at The Escapement in Broadstars. We we greeted by Vince, our lovely host for our game. He sat us down in the lobby and explained our mission;-
"Grimhilde Mining Corp found two anomalies when scanning the earth; one could be accessed through a mining tunnel and the other requires you to voyage into the depths of the ocean.
As newly qualified explorers you must board a GMC submarine and travel down 1000 leagues to an underwater air pocket.
Explore this untouched ancient world and uncover the mystery that is hidden within"
He then told us that he was expecting great things from us as James, our previous host for Quartz, told him how good we were and that we weren't allowed any clues. No pressure then. We then climbed the small staircase and entered the room.
Warning: Spoilers Ahead!
We were greeted by the inside of a submarine. We watched the screen and found out that we had to run some checks to get the subamrine. What it didn't say was that the submarine moves about. These were the warm up puzzles and were great. There was a mix of slightly physical and mental puzzles that we quickly solved and our submarine was away. As you journey down to Atlantis things go wrong and you end up crash landing into Atlantis. The submarine moves quite violently as you crash. I can honestly say that I wasn't expecting it to move and the fact it does really added to the immersion of the room. The door swung open and Atlantis greeted us.
Atlantis was beautiful. Highly themed throughout. I came out of the submarine with a mouth opened wide. We made our way to the main chamber and started to solve the puzzles in the room. The room is very physical. You have ladders and ledges to climb on to solve puzzles so when they say physicaliaty was 4/5, than believe me, it is. I was knackered and sweating profussly after (Sorry Vince and James). The puzzles, despite requiring physicality, wee so much fun. They all seemed to fit into the theme extremely well and none ever felt out of place. We eventually solved all the puzzles in the room, even if someone can't tell the difference between an Angel fish and an Angler fish, and we found the power source Grimhild Mining Corp were after. We had to get back to the submarine.
The finale of this room takes place in the submarine and requires team work to get back to the surface. I'm going to use the hosts description of it as its the best way to explain what happens. It bsically submarine Bop It. You have to push the buttons or turn wheels when it says whilst the submarine is moving. The catch is that the rear of the vessel get the instructions for the front and the front get the rear. It was honestly the most chaotic, confusing, hilarious ending i've experienced in a while. Broadstairs really love a good ending and i'm here for it.
Anyway, we actually did pretty well. Again its a 90 minute room and our team of 4 managed to escape in 43 miutes and 27 seconds. Journey To Atlantis is just an extremely fun game with a lot of suprises and an extremely high level of theming and immersion. Obviously I want to say a huge Thank You for Vince, our amazing host and all the team at The Escapement I can honestly say that these guys have rooms you really don't want to miss and I just have Pirates of Polaris left to play.