Company:
Room Escape Southend

Location:
Southend United Football Club, Roots Hall Stadium, Victoria Avenue, Southend-on-Sea, Essex, SS2 6NQ

Synopsis:
Zombies are taking over the planet. You need to find the cure, whilst avoiding the zombies, before it’s too late.

Date we visited:
29 October 2017

Price at time of visit:
£30 per person

Goats attended:
Daiman, Jenny, Paul

Did we escape?
No

THIS ROOM HAS SINCE CLOSED

Value for money

5/10This is a double-edged sword, the location was absolutely unbeatable and, on that side of things, was definitely worth the price paid. The flip-side of this though is that the overall experience didn’t really capitalise on its potential.

 Daiman

5/10The price was on the high end but for the chance to run around Roots Hall from zombies it was certainly worth the money.

Jenny

7/10£30 is pretty good value considering the amount of actors needed and the use of an entire football stadium.

Paul

Theming

5/10Admittedly, there wasn’t much that needed to be done here – the real-world location was the selling point on its own. That said, the tasks were a bit random and didn’t make much sense in the realms of the narrative.

 Daiman

3/10As this was a zombie run/escape room in a football stadium the theming was limited. There were several hosts around in character which added to it but felt there was more they could have added. They did work hard on the zombie make up though.

Jenny

6/10The zombies were good, but the other actors were a mixed bag. There was no theming done to the venue itself.

Paul

Uniqueness

5/10Whilst the venue was absolutely unique and there’s no questioning that, the puzzles and tasks that we had to perform were interchangable with other games from the same company. It was essentially the same game from them in a different skin.

 Daiman

9/10To combine an escape room and zombie experience was a first for me. Particularly adding in the experience at a football stadium.

Jenny

9/10Combining a zombie run with an escape room is very novel. I would hazard a guess that this has never been attempted before!

Paul

Puzzles

3/10These were all a bit of a mess if I’m honest. The first game inside the stadium wasn’t even a puzzle as such, we just had to find something. The second puzzle ended with us being given the answer. The third puzzle was an extremely difficult physical task and the game ended on a maths type game and that was it. The gameplay was severely lacking here.

 Daiman

4/10There were only 5 puzzles in this experience and you had to solve all of them to be able to get out with the cure. The first puzzle had a fun element as it was only chase, the second/third one was the basic hunt game. The fourth puzzle stumped us, we had to guide a blindfolded team mate through a net of string from one side to the other without ringing the bells. The fifth was a cryptic puzzle. None of the games were extremely stand out.

Jenny

3/10The puzzles were either too simple with the actors helping too much, or they were too difficult and failing even just one would mean you would lose at the end, like we did.

Paul

The good

The stadium is a great location and it was fun at times being chased by zombies.

 Daiman

To have the run of Roots Hall was quite special.

Jenny

Having almost full access to all of Southend football stadium was really cool (you aren’t allowed on the pitch). This is a great opportunity if you are a Southend fan!

Paul

The bad

The game was uninspiring and at times it was clear that there weren’t enough people running it. It feels like it has potential but the overall experience felt very rough.

 Daiman

I felt there could have been more zombies and perhaps an option to fail one game and still be able to get the cure.

Jenny

Some of the actors weren’t in character as much as I would expect. At one point we were left on our own for 5-10 minutes with no idea what we were meant to be doing. It seemed they didn’t have enough actors. It’s a great idea but it needs fine tuning. It was their first time doing this so I expect it to improve over time.

Paul

Overall scores