Hi everyone
In October of 2024, on our weekend away to the Gold Coast, we checked out a
total of 7 escape rooms. Our second room was School of Magic at Padlockd.
I had written to Padlocked ahead of playing this room to
confirm that it was a unique room (given the number of ‘magic’ themed rooms
that we have now played both in Australia and overseas). Padlockd confirmed
that the room was an Indestroom room, but that the only other place that the
room had been constructed was in Brisbane (and even then, there were just
elements from the room that were shared in that Brisbane room).
Unfortunately for us, that didn’t turn out to be correct. Within
about 10 seconds of entering the room, I knew we had played it before. Whilst
there were some subtle puzzle differences, I can confirm that School of Magic
at Padlockd is almost identical to Wizardry at Paniq Room at The Rocks in
Sydney. We played on (but didn’t enjoy the experience, given we had played
Wizardry in Sydney only maybe 6 months before). We zoomed through and escaped
in about half the time.
To their credit, Padlockd refunded our money after I sent
them an email (the GM on the day didn’t seem to appreciate that we were
disappointed, but Emily, their COO, did when I emailed her).
School of Magic was my 313th room. I won’t bother
reviewing the room here – instead, you might as well read my review of Wizardry
here (given the rooms are near identical).
I do want to make a comment though about Indestroom rooms.
For those of you who don’t know, Indestroom is a company (based in Europe I
think) that designs and sells fully-constructed rooms. The concept, as I
understand it, is that ER businesses can purchase a room and it is then sent
across (presumably in a shipping container) with instructions on how to build
and combine all of the pieces together.
I am not a huge fan of this model (and I suspect most
enthusiasts aren’t). What this type of product is good for is to allow ER
businesses to get a new room up and running very quickly and to therefore start
bringing in revenue. And I have heard directly from Sydney ER owners that have
had a successful partnership with Indestroom (albeit subject to exclusive
contractual obligations to purchase spare parts from Indestroom for life, and
an inability to change the room designs in any real way). However, I have yet
to be amazed by the quality of any Indestroom rooms (and none to my knowledge
sit on the top 300 TERPECA rooms list). They are typically reasonable rooms
with high quality props and theming, but without any wow factor, large scale or
any kind of well, soul.
The biggest issue with Indestroom rooms is that the same
rooms are now appearing all over the place and ER owners are not, in my view,
adequately flagging this fact on their websites. For example, I am aware that
there are Indestroom puzzle elements from that same School of Magic Gold Coast
room now at SCRAM in Parramatta and obviously at Paniq Room at The Rocks. So that
is 3 magic-themed rooms in Australia (that I know of) with some identical
puzzles/props (and in the case of School of Magic and Wizardry, almost
completely identical rooms). That’s a problem.
If Indestroom is going to sell its pre-made rooms, surely it
should only be selling those rooms/puzzles in different geographic locations
(and surely ER owners would want to ensure that is the case in their contracts
as well)? But this does not seem to be the case. I also think any ER owners
that purchase Indestroom rooms or puzzle elements should make that clear on
their websites.
Where:
3177 Surfers Paradise Blvd, Surfers Paradise
Duration: 60
minutes
Themes:
14 themes
Price:
$54
per person (over 15yo)
Overall Rating: A reasonable room, an identical copy
of which we had already played elsewhere
More details: https://padlockd.com.au/
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