Fox in a Box Escape Rooms – 16/06/24

It’s taken me a little while to write this one up because, really, what can you say about escape rooms? You can’t give away too much otherwise they’ll find you and lock you up for real. But I’ll try to give you a flavour of the experience as best I can.

First though, the flavour of lunch. You can’t lock three teenage boys and a tween girl up in a room without feeding them first. Roo wanted to try Grab Burger, which was at Dalston Junction, just opposite the escape room. Sadly it was closed so we walked up to Honest Burger near Dalston Kingsland. It wasn’t super quick service but the staff were really friendly and we had time to kill so that was fine. And the burgers were good  – I had the Dalston special, which came with a little pot of jerk gravy. I could have done with a nap after all that food but no, onwards.

We still had a little time to kill before we went in, so we hung out in Dalston Curve Garden, which was heaving on a sunny day (remember those? We had about three of them in June). We found a small table and enough chairs to have some of Roo’s birthday cake and relax while the teens hit each other with sticks. Standard stuff.

Then it was time to go and get locked up. We’ve been past Fox in a Box many times but it doesn’t look big enough to have three separate escape rooms inside. Turns out that you don’t need much space for prison cells. There are three options of games to play and we’d chosen “Prison Break” which was meant to be Intermediate difficulty. There’s no formal age limit but under 14s need to be accompanied by an adult.

I can tell you that we spent some time trying to solve a tanagram puzzle in the lobby and the fights over that made me think we were doomed. There are also lockers and loos while you wait so leave some time to get yourself sorted before the experience begins. There’s also the Wall of Shame, which we assumed we’d end up on.

Then you are ushered through the portal and into the prison. The six of us were split into two cells by the very serious prison officer and from there we were on our own….albeit with a few handy hints from a mysterious voice.

I won’t tell you too much about the experience except to say remember the principle of Mise-en-scène – everything in an escape room is there for a reason, even if the reason for some things is to act as a red herring and throw you off the scent. There was a fair bit of a lateral thinking needed and even a bit of maths but the mysterious voice kept us on track and we managed to escape with a full nine minutes left on the clock. Given we utterly failed last time we did an escape room, I’m pretty pleased with that result. We celebrated with juice from the nearby Co-Op and sent the spare teens packing.

So a fun afternoon out, if a little on the pricey side. It lasts 90 minutes so definitely good to have lunch and a bit of chill out time before going in. It was the right kind of challenging for teenagers and their increasingly brainfogged parents. The orange t-shirts were a nice touch and we got sent team photos for no extra cost. The staff were all super helpful – when not in character – and it felt like everything had been considered in making it a smooth experience. Plus, we won so no Wall of Shame this time! Maybe we’ll be back to try out some of the other rooms….