Blackbeard’s treasure rescued!

I have never been to an Escape Room before but that was the u3a Adventure Group’s destination for December so I signed up. Six of us assembled at the location in Exeter ready to have a go at pirate themed puzzles.

The premise was that we were on a pirate galleon. Our captain, the terrifying Blackbeard, had been killed and his ship was sinking fast. We needed to break into his cabin, find the treasure and escape. We had just sixty minutes before the ship would sink.

After a brief introduction we were let into the room and left to our own devices. As we looked around we saw lots of pirate themed objects and gradually started to piece clues together. As we solved various puzzles, hiding places opened and other objects were revealed. Eventually we found the key that gave us access to Blackbeard’s cabin and more puzzles were revealed until at last we found the secret room and the treasure chest. I can’t really tell you much more than that as before we went in we signed a waiver and part of it said that we could not take photos or reveal details that might spoil the fun for others.

The puzzles were quite varied and there were times when we spent a lot of effort on things that turned out to be red herrings. We had been told that we could ring a bell for help if we were really stuck and we did do this at one point. A disembodied voice gave us clues about how to move forward. The same voice also helped us from time to time when we had solved a puzzle but missed what had been revealed.

I really enjoyed the Escape Room. The puzzles were about the right level of difficulty – challenging but not frustrating – and there were plenty of different things so that we could all be working on our own or in small groups and nobody was left out or in each other’s way. We all had things that we succeeded at and things that we needed our friends to help us with and between us we found the treasure in fifty three minutes so no danger of us sinking with the ship!

Thank you to Carolyn for organising this excellent activity. I only wish I could tell you more or show you some photographs of us at work but Blackbeard’s secrets must stay secret!

Deb

You can find out more about Deb’s adventurous life by visiting her blog at debs60things.