In the colder months, when there isn’t much sunshine, we tend to book up an escape room or two! This time, we went to KnownEscape in Bishop’s Stotford for their Christmas Cat-Astrophe Escape Room, which is a Christmas version of their Crazy Cat Lady escape room that they run during the year. This Christmas theme is shown through the decorations in the room and through the slight change in puzzles, though we haven’t been to their original version of the game, we are pretty sure it would be very similar.
We entered KnownEscape which has a little lobby, where you can purchase some drinks, snacks, and board games. There are free to use lockers to put your phone in and to put your jacket in, which is nice. We put all of our stuff in one of these lockers before a member of staff started explaining a few ground rules. There are some specific locks that were going to be a bit tricky and a few safety things that we were told about, in case we there was a fire alarm or the like. Then, we entered the room.
Like most escape rooms, Christmas Cat-Astrophe at KnownEscape is a room on the smaller side to begin with. We all had room to move around (we went as a family, so there was five of us) and it was clear seeing all the Christmas decorations. This escape room was very lock heavy – with lots of locks that needed solving, which isn’t our absolute favorite. One of the locks specifically, we had the right code, but the lock itself didn’t work. The person instructing us asked us what code we were putting in, confirmed it to be correct, and then asked us to tug on it or wiggle the side. After about 3 minutes of not being able to get it open, she came in and opened it. I do feel that when you have an escape room reliant on locks, they should be easier to open if you have the right combination!
Christmas Cat-Astrophe Escape Room at Known Escape was very good with it’s Christmas theme – our job was to do lots of little tasks for Aunt Edna, before she returned, including finding and putting her cats in the right places. These different tasks were fun! We also had a note pad that you could write on and erase, which was very handy as well. When we needed a hint, we all needed to put our hands on our heads. Robin found this to be her favorite part as we all did it at the same time! The games master also gave us hints when we were really stuck, without us asking, which primarily came through as Santa’s voice! This was a nice touch. Our specifically requested hints came through as text on a screen that had our countdown.
We finished Christmas Cat-Astrophe Escape Room at KnownEscape with nearly 12 minutes left, which felt like a real accomplishment. Everything sort of came together quickly at the end! We all enjoyed our time there, with Kai being confused on why some stuff wasn’t used yet was in the room and Amelia having a fantastic time solving a few of the more challenging puzzles. At the end of the game, they do take a Winning Team photo, which is then emailed to you, and you do get a time card at the end as well. It’s worth noting that the images that are shared to promote the Christmas Cat-Astrophe Escape Room at KnownEscape are AI generated art, which isn’t something we support, especially with how expensive escape rooms are!
You can check out our other Days Out to see what else we’ve been up too!