Ohhhh my goodness. We did not get back to our hotel until 1am. I don’t think I have fallen asleep so fast in a long time.

Today I woke up far more refreshed. Which is a good thing because there was some trekking to be done today.

Canadian Bumpkin Moments

Okay so Errol was making fun of me and was confused about my system for judging my bumpkin ways, especially since I have been to the Netherlands once before so should know more.

I was going to nix the section all together, but then discovered new things, so I am calling this “moments” instead and leaving out a rating There.

One thing I always have to do when visiting another country is try their snaaacks! There was a self-serve bar at one of our escapes I took advantage of, and the chip flavours were ones I had never seen! Things like Paprika and Bolognese!

I also picked out a waffle snack, which I thought was a cookie but no, turned out to be an actual waffle! I mean the picture looks like a waffle but who knew the advertising was accurate?!

I also have to appreciate how fortunate it is that the Netherlands is so English friendly. This year I didn’t have time to learn any Dutch beforehand and as a result am even more of an entitled English speaker than ever. The fact that we can just start speaking English in almost any part of the Netherlands and have people switch on a whim from Dutch to English is amazing and I have to remember not to take it for granted.

After our escapes we ended up wandering Bunschoten-Spakenburg, the small town Mama Bazooka is near. There was more yelling of how cute things were and much flashing of cameras, increasing our annoying tourist status considerably. All the old houses, meadows/fields, and small town vibes made me think a murder mystery was bound to happen…I may have been watching too many British murder mysteries lately…

Frizz report

My friend Margaux leant me her hair product called hair silk. It worked… for five minutes.

I am losing hope of ever finding proper hair product in this country…

The Escapes!

Today we had 2 facilities on our roster: Rock City Escape and Mama Bazooka! These were both more out of the way facilities and, as it turns out, ride share is not nearly as much of a thing in the Netherlands so we ended up having to rely on transit to get us from point to point. Luckily we made it!

Rock City Escape- Soup Du Jour

Rock City Escape is located in an old monastery in Amersfoort. It is shocking how pretty a lot of the escape room locations here are, but Rock City Escape definitely takes the prize so far for most impressive location.

In Soup Du Jour, the players are guests at a monastery restaurant. The head chef, apparently, is rather irate after a young nun disappeared. But no matter, we are here to enjoy our dinner…or are we?!

Soup Du Jour was a fun game all around. Our host Sam, who is also an escape enthusiast, was great as a nervous acolyte leading us to dinner. Rock City Escape, like many escapes we play in the Netherlands, has a big focus on the pre-game experience. Sam introduced us to the story in-character and even had us dress up in monastery robes as a dress code for the restaurant.

The room itself was a pretty classic, but also a very polished, escape room experience. Soup Du Jour in particular did some really creative stuff with projections that I quite enjoyed. We also had a great interaction and reveal that was done in a way I hadn’t seen before. The set, too, did very much feel like the dining area of a restaurant/dining hall.

The story of the room made sense, although after playing a few escapes now where the puzzles are a bit more integrated with the story these classic puzzles felt a little jarring to me at first. However, I quickly suspended my disbelief and had fun solving them and taking in the sinister plot. We even learned afterward that the other rooms are also tied to the same overarching plot, which is always a plus in my books! I wish we could have played more, but sadly we didn’t realize we had failed to book another room and by the time we realized the slots were taken up.

All in all, we loved our time at Rock City Escape playing the game and nerding out with Sam after about all things escape rooms. Sam ended up making another recommendation for a new game called Non-Believers! I hope we get to play it, although they are fully booked Sunday and not open on Mondays. Fingers crossed!

Mama Bazooka- The Dome

After Rock City, we rushed over to Mama Bazooka. We had all three games scheduled, but as I had played The Laboratory and Girl’s Room before I would sit these out. Luckily my team were also joined by Thomas, who did the tech for The Alchemist at Sherlocked and hadn’t yet played Girl’s Room! I did still get to watch the video recaps of their playthroughs, which is a great customer service feature Mama Bazooka continues to do with its customers.

What I did play, however, was The Dome. For those that don’t know, The Dome had not quite been ready the last time I was in the Netherlands and since then has been at the top of the Terpecas a few years in a row.

Well, now we finally have gotten the chance to play it. And…yeah, without spoiling I can see why it was the top of the list. The technical achievements are astounding, and the game seems to continue the trend we are noticing in the Netherlands of big reveals and very creative uses of space. There are a lot of really fun and impressive aspects of the game.

Speaking personally…the style of game is not really my cup of tea. The high tension, tightly timed experience with big team puzzles is appealing to a lot of people, but I like to be able to take some time and play around in an experience as well. Here, every mistake made cost us valuable minutes. Our success was sometimes entirely dependent on someone who just “lucked” into a situation but who was not the most suitable to the task. Toward the end we were barely paying attention to our surroundings unless they were directly tied to our goal. In the end, we ended up being more stressed and frustrated, and didn’t have as much fun.

Taking my own personal preference out of it, we couldn’t help but notice some bottlenecking issues where a couple of us would be standing around waiting for our teammates to finish a puzzle. Interrupting would break a flow, so I often found myself wandering aimlessly or standing in the corner trying not to get in the way.

There was a basic story from what I could tell, but I think a couple of major details might have been difficult to follow. This was especially the case with our team, who missed a key moment at the beginning. Even if they had noticed it though, I doubt it would have clarified anything as I did notice it and still didn’t know how it affected things. We were explained the story afterward, but it would have been nice to have it more obvious in-game. Still, it didn’t affect the experience and wasn’t really the focus.

We did end up beating it, and I was still impressed with what the Dome achieved! I think I tempered my expectations enough after learning the hard way what happens when a game is overhyped. I would say the Dome is a must play in the Netherlands for sure! But maybe go with a smaller group or, if you are like me and not good with high intensity environments where mistakes cost you dearly, maybe stack your team with people that do like that.

Netherlands Trends

I can fully confirm now: the Netherlands loves crawling. Every single room has crawling of some sort. Even with padding, my bum knee is not a happy camper right now.

We also realized yesterday that escape rooms in the Netherlands favours the tall, which makes sense given that the average height of people in the Netherlands is generally higher. It means we have to rely on Errol to notice a lot more things, which he hates of course because it means he has to be less lazy.

Another interesting trend is that there are no waivers at escape rooms here! I guess it makes sense as North America, especially the USA, is pretty sue-crazy. For all the crawling, climbing, and other stuff we do in these escapes, it’s impressive nothing major has come up!

Many of the larger escape rooms we visited have a self service snack bar of some sort. I think this is such a great trend! I even broke down and had some wine because hey, how often in North America am I going to find escape rooms with a liquor license AND a relaxed attitude about alcohol?

Tomorrow we head to another DarkPark location and try out Stay in the Dark, a 2 hour horror experience. Every time we bring it up to other hosts and owners, they seem to have an intake of breath followed by “good luck …”. Oh boy…