With our recent decorating project coming to an end we decided to head out for a full day at The Gate! Well, nearly a full day. Our first booking was at Escape Newcastle on the 1st Floor. I spotted that they had just opened up a Christmas themed Escape room, Santa’s List.
Santa’s List Escape Room
The Story behind this room is that you’ve been put on Santa’s Naughty List. There is a limited amount of time to try and remove your name from the list. If it’s too late then there will be no presents for you this Christmas.
The Room is set up at the entrance of Escape Newcastle’s location in The Gate. With a sign above the door reading Santa’s Grotto. From the outside, it looks like a normal shopping centre Santa’s grotto and not that big either. We were given our safety briefing and pointed in the right direction into the grotto. With a Walkie Talkie for communication with the game hosts, we were updated with time and clues when needed. We had 1 hour to clear our names!
Santa’s Grotto
Our last Family Escape Room, in Orlando, had use bundled in with 4 other players (one being a true Alpha Male). Today it was just us four, although I’m sure we were up to the challenge.
Disclaimer: We’ll try not to add any spoilers as giving any clues will ruin your experience
Inside Santa’s Grotto, you find yourself in a room that looks like a sitting room set up for Christmas. Tree, Stockings, cards, and presents are around the room. Lighting is dim and one of the main light sources is from a pulsing Christmas Tree light string. Abigail straight away started to get a little “windy”, she was expecting someone to jump out at her.
As we started to hunt around the room finding the clues and working out the number combinations, I started to feel disappointed. I felt like I could see the end about 4 puzzles away. After all, this was one of the cheapest Escape Rooms in Newcastle. We’d paid £50 for the four of us. So I felt there would be a limitation in the setup. Then I was proven wrong!
After our “final” puzzle we unlocked a new room. We were outdoors, with a security pad and a new locked door.
POW! We unlocked the door and we were in what looked like Santa’s Workshop. The room saw full of brightly coloured toys, a miniature train, a huge marble run, and a sound system bleating out Christmas tunes. We started off making great progress then needed to call for help. The clue suggested we looked at something in the room and the penny dropped. We were heading towards the “end” again when another room opened up.
As we stepped into the new room (Santa’s back office/control room) we were given a time update of 40 minutes. With only 20 minutes left I started to enter panic mode and worked a little quicker. However, working quicker stopped us just looking at things. We were interpreting clues differently, instead of seeing what was clearly in front of us. Eventually, we were really down to the last puzzle and we struggled to unlock the lock. We ended up inputting the combination 6 times, 3 of them being the right answer!
A large ornate key with a folded piece of paper in an envelope was inside. We used the key immediately and we were out!
The folded paper was Santa’s Naughty List, which had Alan + Family marked out as on the Naughty List. Which is a cute souvenir to take from the experience.
We Escaped in 49 Minutes 10 seconds, a time that is something to be proud of. We did ask for a few clues throughout the rooms, but we only asked when we’d tried everything we could think of. The clues pointed towards a location and each time they seemed to be obviously the location.
The Cost of the Escape Room was £50. That seems to be for the room and not the person as the cost per person came down to £12.50 when I added the 4 of us in. I liked the way this was priced and it is definately worth the price. It was a fun hour of puzzle solving for us to start our day out.
To book or find out more about the Escape Newcastle Rooms visit https://www.escape-newcastle.co.uk/
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