Escape from Prison Island with kids: review
90 minutes, 32 puzzles, one prison – my family loves an escape room, so as soon as I heard of the new immersive experience opening in north London, I couldn’t wait to try out Escape from Prison Island with kids.
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There are currently 104 ‘prisons’ in 24 countries across the world, including a similar experience in Maidstone, Kent, as well as one in Belfast, with Escape from Prison Island London opening near Holloway Road in October.
So what’s involved if you’re planning to visit Escape from Prison Island with kids? Here’s everything we need to know – and what makes it such a great day out in London with kids.
Escape from Prison Island with kids: review
It was a sunny day for a prison break-out – we’d been warned to wear layers, as it can get hot inside (especially some of the more active rooms), as well as something comfortable.
With our tickets booked for 11am, we’d been told to turn up 15 minutes early but ended up arriving slightly earlier. Numbers are limited as otherwise you’d have too many teams trying to get into the rooms, but there’s space to wait and we had no problems getting in as soon as we’d signed the waiver.
Top Tip: have a team name ready – you’ll need this for the rankings, and our minds all went blank at first when we were asked
You get a key for one of the lockers, so you can leave coats and bags in there – ours had plenty of space for three winter coats and two small bags, although you wouldn’t be able to fit huge amounts in there.
You can take your phones in, although if you’re thinking you can use them to solve the puzzles, think again – they either won’t help or you won’t have time to try to get clues! They are great for taking photos, if you remember though.
Then, after a short briefing explaining how the experience works, the gavel bangs down, you’re sentenced and it’s time to enter and get ready for your jail break – expect lots of prison styling inside, like barred doors and concrete.
The concept is all pretty straightforward: each room has information outside showing whether the focus is more on Tactics, Techniques or Physics (or a mixture), as well as the minimum number of players, the maximum points and the stress level.
Your 90 minutes starts when you use your fob to enter the first room, so we walked around getting our bearings and checking them all out first, trying to work out which ones we thought we’d be best at before triggering the countdown, and that felt like a good plan rather than wasting 10 minutes running around like headless chickens.
Be prepared to be surprised though – we assumed that Tactics and Physics would suit us best, but we did really well at a few of the ‘Techniques’ rooms, which involved things like shooting a laser gun, throwing balls into nets, kicking footballs and a hilariously fun dance game.
If the light is red, the room is occupied and you’ll need to wait or come back later, although there were only a couple which we never managed to try.
Once you’re inside, each room has its own different time limit with a countdown towards the end, but you can have more than one attempt at solving it which comes in very handy. In quite a few cases, we seemed to spend half of the first attempt working out what we needed to do, then had a second go actually completing the puzzle.
In two cases we had six goes at the room – one of them got us the full points (with literally 3 seconds to spare), the other we never quite managed to avoid making a mistake.
Happily it’s your best score which gets recorded, so apart from the time spent, there’s no downside to trying again, and you can check your total on the digital scoreboards in the corridors, plus see how well you’re doing compared to the other teams.
For us, the rooms seemed to split into three categories – ones we could do pretty much straight away (even if we didn’t always do it well), ones were we needed a first attempt to work it out then another one to play successfully, and a third set where we just could not do them at all, ending up with a big fat zero as a result.
If you walk into a room and think ‘oh not a chance’ (which I did when faced with a fireman’s pole), you can just walk straight out again though, there’s no need to waste the rest of the time inside. Looking at our stats at the end, we spent a total of six seconds in one room before giving up…
As a bonus, there’s a clue written on the back of the door which becomes visible under UV light – you’re given a little light pointer along with your locker key and fob, all on a lanyard around your neck.
You can have between 2 and 5 in a team but I think 3 (or 4) is the sweet spot. A few puzzles need a minimum of three people, and it’s physically impossible to do them with fewer – unless you have enormously long arms.
Some of the rooms are quite small, so cramming five adults in would also be tricky though. Our team, with two adults and a teen, seemed to work nicely – we were never short of space, but had enough people to divide up and save running backwards and forwards.
Having a mix of skillsets is also good if you can – my daughter smashed a tricky balance problem without turning a hair. When I confidently followed her, I lasted about 15 seconds and she and my husband are still laughing about the inelegant solution I came up with as an alternative!
My husband’s teen years came in handy when it came to firing a laser gun, and I like to think I helped with a few of the more cerebral puzzles.
It’s a fantastic mix of rooms though, so you never quite know what you’ll get when you walk through the door – some feel like they should be easy to solve, but there’s a twist, like one room that completely messes with your sense of balance as you’re working it out, or another where the key is remembering details but where we still kept getting caught out.
Others see you hitting green lights (while avoiding red), spotting patterns or trying to avoid triggering alarms. Some I still don’t know how to solve.
Then suddenly our 90 minutes was up and we’d managed to try 27 out of 32 rooms: one remains a mystery as none of us remember seeing it, my daughter flatly refused to go in to Shark Bay, and our timing had been unlucky with the other three as they always seemed to be occupied.
We’d ended up coming a respectable second on the leaderboard of the day though – even if it was only midday.
My teen’s verdict? “That was so much fun” – and I definitely agreed.
Escape from Prison Island: Need to know
Playing Escape from Prison Island is pretty straightforward – even if the puzzles aren’t always – but here’s everything you need to know before you visit.
The practical details
Escape from Prison Island is in north London, at 5-7 Hornsey Street, London N7 8GA. It’s just around the corner from Holloway Road tube, in zone 2 of the Piccadilly Line.
There’s no parking at the venue itself and limited spaces on the surrounding streets. It’s a stone’s throw from Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium, so if you’re visiting on a match day, there are more restrictions on parking as well.
Having said that, at around 10.15am on a non-match day Sunday, we did find a space a couple of streets away.
Tickets
Prebooking tickets is a good plan, although you may be able to buy them on the door at quieter times. You’ll need to choose a time slot to start, with half-hourly slots throughout the day, as numbers are limited.
If you do have more than five people in your group, you’ll need to split into two groups to play.
No refunds are allowed but you may be able to change the time of your slot if you get in touch more than 24 hours in advance.
Tickets currently cost £27.90 for adults, £24.90 for children aged 7-17, plus booking fee.
How long do you need for Prison Island
You’re asked to turn up 15 minutes before your time slot, to give time to sort out the practicalities beforehand (waiver, putting things in a locker, briefing etc).
Then you have 90 minutes inside starting from the time you first use your fob to open a door. At the end of the 90 minutes, your fob will stop working. Originally the sessions were for 60 minutes with an option to buy more time, but the London experience is currently 90-minute slots.
There’s nothing stopping you from taking a few minutes to check out the rooms and layout before you begin either. All in all, you should be done within two hours though.
Is Prison Island good for families?
Yes, absolutely. It’s suitable for kids aged 7+, although I think it’s best for age 10 and up as some of the puzzles would be trickier for younger ones, while others might need more physical reach.
For teams without adults, children need to be 14 to play unaccompanied, but otherwise you just need one person aged 18+.
My 13-year-old loved it, and it’s a great twist on an escape room, as if you do get stuck in one room, you can just move on rather than it affecting the rest of the game.
It is a great bonding experience as you work together to complete the puzzles (as long as you don’t get too hung up on who made a mistake).
How is it different from an escape room?
If you love an escape room, you’ll definitely find some similarities in some of the tactics rooms in particular – solving puzzles, spotting patterns, trying to work out clues and so on.
But you’ll also have some very different rooms to try, where you’ll be using other skills to get points.
In an escape room, you’ll normally have 60 minutes to complete all the puzzles in one place, with each success usually unlocking a new clue or a new puzzle. Which does mean that if you have trouble figuring something out, you have to rely on clues from escape room staff otherwise you’re completely stuck.
Here, if you can’t work out one of the challenges, you can just move on and try something new.
Do you need to be physically fit?
No, not particularly – most of the more physical rooms rely on skill and accuracy rather than strength, and even if you find yourself dashing around, it’s only for a short period of time.
However not all the games are accessible (although the venue is wheelchair accessible) with obstacles to manoeuvre around. Even those which don’t have stairs or need you to climb might have limited space for wheelchairs too. There’s information on which of the cells are wheelchair accessible on the website.
What should I wear?
Comfortable clothes and layers are a good idea – there’s no air conditioning at the venue, which was fine in November, but you may find you get hot during some of the more active puzzles.
You also don’t want to be restricted by your clothes as you’re sprinting around trying to solve the puzzles. High heels aren’t allowed, but trainers are a better option than boots (or flip flops in summer).
What facilities are there?
There are toilets in the entrance area, which you can use before/after playing the game. You can also buy drinks.
There are plenty of places to eat and drink nearby around Holloway Road as well.
Disclosure: My entry was free for the purposes of review – all opinions and inability to complete some puzzles remains our own. This post contains affiliate links – any purchases you make are unaffected but I may receive a small commission
Images: Briefing Room image courtesy of Escape from Prison Island, all others copyright MummyTravels
