If you are looking for the most fun you can have with your pants on then look no further than Newcastle’s very own branch of Escape Reality.

Escape Reality is brought to us by the brilliant and devious minds of Georgia, Matty, Robin, and Sam, who aim to please, with four different amazing and devilishly fiendish rooms.

For those of you who have never tried an escape room, I’ll explain the basics to you. First, you’ll need some friends, the recommended number of players (victims) is 2 to 6. Anymore and it becomes a case of too many cooks in the kitchen.

After signing a waiver and a few instructions, you enter your chosen escape room where you are locked in. Your mission should you choose to accept it, is to escape the room by solving a series of clues, puzzles, and locks all within the given time limit. Each room has its own theme and puzzles to challenge your wisdom and intelligence.

I fortunately was asked to do a review on escape rooms and after recruiting my partner and some friends from the office, we headed to Crown Street, Newcastle to Escape Reality.

Once upstairs we met our lovely host Luan, an avid self-described lover of escape rooms, who originally was just a customer but loved the escape rooms so much she applied for a job. Now that’s an advertisement for the entertainment levels of Escape Reality.

I would love to go into detail on the finer points of what happened to us over the next fun filled hour, but I have been sworn to secrecy, so as not to spoil the surprises for everyone who might read this and decide to try it for themselves.

However, I will tell you it was an adrenaline filled hour of fun and teamwork as we raced around the room trying to solve the puzzles that had been set for us, laughing all the way as we asked ourselves similar questions that would become common place for the next hour, such as, “Is this something?” “Did that work?” “What does this do?” and the more frantic, “WHAT IS THE CODE???”

I can also tell you that an hour slaving away at work seems to last half the day, while an hour in the escape room seemed to last 5 minutes. Time really does fly when you’re having fun.

Speaking of 5 minutes, when I checked the clock and saw we had only 5 minutes left, I thought that we were done for and we would spend the rest of our lives trapped in that room. Racing against time and for the solution to the last puzzle we frantically entered the code and opened the door to the vibrant gleam of daylight with one minute and thirty seconds to spare.

With a smile of relief and a considerable amount of self-satisfaction we burst from the room. Here we were granted the opportunity to dress up and pose for a photo op, which Escape Reality then sends to your email after.

Escape Reality’s escape rooms are an amazing hour of fun that is well spent, whether or not you succeed in escaping the room. If you escape, awesome work! If, however you don’t manage to, then you can always revisit the room and try again.

This activity is perfect for corporate events, bucks/hens nights, birthday parties, or just a fun time with friends (make sure you bring your smarter friends along). If you have a group of more than 6 don’t worry, you can just split into different rooms.

So, come to Newcastle and escape the boredom, with Escape Reality.