Push Escape Rooms - The Movies Experience Review (Belgium)

 

Hi everyone

The fourteenth room that we played on our May/June 2024 child-free trip to Holland was The Movies Experience by The Push Mystery Rooms, located at Dudzele, bout a 20 minute bus ride outside of Bruges.

My wife and I played The Movies Experience as a duo. I had heard great things about the room from so many enthusiasts, so I knew it had to be on our list. One of the challenges in playing The Movies Experience is that there are very few slots each day that it is run and usually, it is booked out well in advance. Each slot is available exactly one month before, midnight Belgium time. I vividly remember walking around The Easter Show in Sydney desperately logging in and grabbing my spot. All spots were gone that day within 2 minutes, but luckily we managed to get a spot too. A tip with this is that the owner recognises how difficult it can be to get a booking so he encourages enthusiasts to contact him early to try to secure a timeslot.

We caught a bus from Bruges to Dudzele, which from memory took around 20 minutes or so. We arrived at a home with a very large, modern garage roller door. We hit the intercom button and then the fun began.

The Movies Experience was our 304^th room and here is what we thought:

• so much care and effort has been put into the entire experience here. Anthony Boelaert, the owner and our GM, is an interior architect by trade and the attention to detail that he puts into every single aspect of the experience is crazy. The reception area is really cool and so too is the bar where we had a drink after our game;
• the Movies Experience involves players stumbling onto a magic golden ticket which takes players through several different movies during their adventure. I can only recall one other similar-ish concept, which was Pandores et Associes in Paris, where players travel through different fairytale stories. The Movies Experience excelled at the really strong backstory and storyline throughout;
• I do not want to give any spoilers, so rather than let you know the many movies that are involved throughout the adventure, I will say that there are a lot of them and that anyone playing is likely to have seen most of them (or at least have heard of them all). The scale of this adventure is fantastic;
• the puzzles throughout The Movies Experience are all really varied and were a lot of fun to solve. Most were medium level difficulty – not too easy and not too hard, but all satisfying to solve. The room flow is also really strong. Given we were only a team of 2, I was worried that we might have bitten off more than we could chew, but we managed to escape with a reasonable amount of time left on the clock;
• I think the biggest drawcard in this experience is the set design. Anthony clearly loves attention to detail and all of the spaces were movie-set quality. Every piece made sense in the space and was really nicely integrated into the puzzles/puzzle elements; and
• one thing to note is that there one scary movie that players will encounter during The Movies Experience. This can be played in one of two modes – the full experience or lite mode. The difference, as I understand it, is that the full mode involves a scary character interaction, with this being toned down considerably in the lite mode. We bravely went with the full version and although I don’t love super scary rooms, that part was probably my favourite moment of The Movies Experience. So if in doubt, be brave and go for it. [Following this trip, I have been to Spain and Greece and played some of the scariest rooms in the world – I can confirm that The Movies Experience is not nearly as scary as those Spanish/Greek rooms]

The Movies Experience is currently TERPECA #21. I think there are many reasons for this – the pure scale of the adventure, the quality of the puzzles and the unbelievable quality of the set design and props. The character interactions were also excellent. The Movies Experience was our favourite room on this trip and I would rate it within the top 10 rooms that I have played at the time of writing this review. Go and check it out, if you can get a booking.

Where:                 Damse Steenweg 28 8380 Dudzele

Duration:            100 minutes

Themes:              1 theme

TERPECA:          #21 (formerly #22)

Price:                    250€ per team (full experience)

Overall Rating:     An epic adventure with unmatched set design

More details:         https://www.pushpushpush.be/rooms/the-movies-experience/