This weekend (12th May), Thorpe Park Resort opened the doors to their newest escape room experience, Jungle Escape, for an invited group to preview the Island’s newest addition. Attraction Source was amongst those invited to try and escape the Jungle Arena.
Located near Nemesis Inferno, in the building which used to be home to the I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! maze, Jungle Escape is Thorpe Park Resort’s newest addition offering “an escape room like no other” where you are pitted against a rival team to see who can escape the Huntsman’s Jungle Arena.
Guests are greeted by an energetic and enthusiastic host who provides a humorous introduction before leading you inside to the pre-show. Inside, whilst the infrastructure of the benches and screen remain from I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! and Vulcan Peak, the rest of the room has received new theming with a range of items relating to a hunt placed around the room. The pre-show introduces The Huntsman, a colonial styled hunter who has grown tired of hunting the indigenous wildlife and now seeks a more fearsome prey – humans. Splitting the groups into two teams, he dictates that they will compete against each other in a series of challenges to earn ‘element gems’ in a bid to be victorious and be allowed to escape the jungle. The losing team however will become the Huntsman’s prey.
Each team faces two rooms containing puzzles designed to test a range of skills including problem solving, dexterity and teamwork. However, players only have 7 minutes in each room meaning it is also a race against time. Whilst we won’t spoil exactly what the puzzles are, what we can say is the tasks are very similar to some of those that might be found in The Crystal Maze with very high construction and design quality. The puzzles have been set at just the right level so as to be challenging, but not completely impossible. Importantly, there are enough things that need doing simultaneously to ensure everyone in the group can play an active role in solving and completing the puzzles. If a team succeeds in completing the task they are rewarded with a gem which is revealed from an automatically opening locked box.
Once the two rooms have been completed, both teams encounter a survivor of the Huntsman’s games. After revealing the twist in the experience, guests are ushered through to the final section which sees the slide finale return, providing a fun way to end the experience. This final section is perhaps in need of a little work to help it have the full desired impact, however with a couple of tweaks it has the potential to bring the attraction to a good conclusion.
Jungle Escape is an upcharge attraction with tickets costing £10 if purchased on the day; £9 if bought online in advance; £8 for Annual Passholders and £7.50 for Shark Hotel Guests. Overall the experience takes approximately 25-30 minutes which based on our experience is just the right amount of time for the attraction. Jungle Escape opens officially on Saturday 18th May (however SouthParks understands the attraction will soft open from Monday 13th May) and runs until 27th September 2019.
Will you be planning to try and escape from the Huntsman’s Jungle Arena when Jungle Escape opens? Make sure you share your thoughts and experiences over on the Attraction Source Forum.
