Crystal Maze Live Experience - worth it?

I just went to the Crystal Maze live experience yesterday, was a bit hesitant given the price of £73 per person.

What's the Crystal Maze?

It's a game show I used to watch in the 1990s. There are 4 zones and several challenges per zone. Only one player of the group gets to participate in it while the other team players guide and cheer you on from tiny windows.

Usually the player will get 2-3 minutes to complete the task, and get a crystal.

The crystal is worth 5 seconds in the Crystal Dome where you collect as many flying papers as possible ~ how fun!

Do we need to be a group of 8?

I dropped by before that since I'm always in Leicester Square to ask some questions and that I'm sure you're also too lazy to search:

• If you're just 2 people, will you be combined with another group to complete the 8? Unfortunately yes, they'll just keep selling the slot until the 8 is reached.
• In that case, the next question is - when is the off-peak time? The attendant said Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday but there are corporate bookings as well.
• So we can be combined with corporate bookings? You will only be combined with retail bookings such as yourself!

In the show there are only a number of challenges, my initial guess was 8 so if you're a group of 8, each person will only get to go once.

Then that means I should try my best to get an empty slot!

Unfortunately I'm leaving after a few days, so I didn't have that much time.. But if I were to find an emptier slot, my strategy is to go on a weekday (Tues - Thurs as advised) and check for slots with at least 6 availability, and a nearer time slot.

What to expect?

If you really want to spoil yourself..

I'm not spilling the games but just like in the show, there are four types of games - mental, physical, skill and mystery. They won't reveal the mechanics of the game until you choose a person to play the game.

I was really happy to find out that there are 16 challenges, so each person gets to play at least twice!

My experience

I signed up last minute, like around 6:30pm for a green 8pm Thursday slot and thought, that should be empty!

Well.. guess what, we were 2 people who got paired up with a family of 6 so I was a bit worried because it's almost end of day and I didn't feel like mingling at that time.

If you booked the 8pm slot, you have 8pm-8:30pm to show up and complete your team.

Once completed, we moved to a cafe / bar area (cant drink alcohol before playing) as we "chill" and leave our stuff in the lockers.

No phones or cameras are allowed so unfortunately, if you're curious, you'd have to read through my words for my experience.

Playing with strangers

It wasn't as bad as I thought. We were sitting in separate tables in the waiting / dining area and then one of the staffs came to tell us that the game is starting.

We climbed up the stairs in narrow hallways and was told to come up with a team name.

That was a good ice breaker because we had to introduce ourselves and then we immediately had a task.

After that, we went into a dark room, what seemed to look like an entrance to more rooms and stairs. Then they played an intro video.

It was just clips of the old game show with the original host - Richard O'Brien being funny, but no explanation of the mechanics yet.

Apparently, I was the only one of the 7 who has seen the show and was excited about it. Everyone else maybe thought it was just a great team building activity.

I wonder how many people actually know what they were signing up for..

Our host came in to explain the actual game mechanics, and her British accent made it feel authentic, like I was in the game show!

To add to that, we ran around in small narrow spaces, to travel from zone to zone, with the theme song playing in the background, just like in the show!

The games

Not knowing what the games are is the fun of it, so I'll keep this a mystery. But if you watch the show, it's very similar.

I'm very much impressed with the mechanisms they used, very advanced and ancient at the same time - know what I mean?

Physical games can get pretty physical.

Mental games sometimes require logic, or solving riddles or puzzles.

Skill games are also a mix of physical and mental.

As for the mystery games, I thought they were some sort of a guessing game, but they can be a mix of mental, physical, skill. So it might be a "miscellaneous" type of game.

You need at least 4 crystals (that means winning at least 4 challenges) to play the dome, and I felt like the whole game was designed in such a way that there were enough of the easy ones for you to get at least 4 crystals.

There were 16 challenges so each of us had a go at least 2x and it didn't feel awkward at all playing with strangers!

But maybe the family we got paired up with was really nice..

Worth it?

Amidst the plethora of today's VR live experiences, escape rooms, amazing races - this was like a breath of fresh air.

Having played 2 games myself..

...and participating in my teammates' games by shouting at them (so fun)

...and running around the different zones (there was a slide too!) with the theme song playing in the background

...and experiencing the famous crystal dome

I say it's really worth the £70 that they're charging, was really happy with my experience and it's very close to the TV show!

I can't wait to let my family try this too! It's definitely one of my memorable experiences.