Escape Reality - Central Coast (Tuggerah, Australia) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-6 players Age limit: Under 15 requires adult Difficulty: 3/5 Date visited: January 2026 This was the second of our four rooms at Escape Reality on the Central Coast. It's their third highest-rated room but regarded as their most difficult one according to the GM and their website. So how was it? This was a good room, better in just about every respect compared to the first room we did

Escape Reality - Central Coast (Tuggerah, Australia) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-6 players Age limit: Under 15 requires adult Difficulty: 3/5 Date visited: January 2026 It was still the school holidays, so we decided to take an overnight trip to the Central Coast to play the 4 games at Escape Reality in Tuggerah. All 4 of their games are rated quite highly on Morty, so we went in with moderate expectations. I booked the games in the order of lowest to highest rate

Escape This (Sydney, Australia) Time limit: 60 minutes Age limit: 13+ Player limit: 3-8 (4-8 on Friday and Saturday peak times) Difficulty: 8/10 Date visited: January 2026 The first Escape This game we played was The Wizard's Chamber , which was gorgeous but had middling puzzles. The second one we played was Kraken: Nemo's Revenge , which we did not like at all. But I wanted to take the boys to their first escape room of 2026 and I saw that their newest room, Frankenstein Re

Escape Rooms Wellington (Wellington, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-6 players (recommended 4-5) Age limit: Under 16 requires adult Difficulty: Hard Date visited: December 2025 This was our third and final room at Escape Room Wellington. It’s also their newest and most high-tech room. We did it on separate day to the other two rooms, returning in the morning to play the room before a visit to the WETA Workshop and our return flight back to Sydney. Here ar

Escape Rooms Wellington (Wellington, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-7 players (recommended 4-6) Age limit: Under 16 requires adult Difficulty: Tricky (4/5) Date visited: December 2025 Disclaimer: Our second room at Escape Rooms Wellington was provided by owner Steve free of charge. He saw that I had booked his 2 other rooms and was kind enough to throw in The Diamond Heist  on the house. That said, this in no way affected my thoughts on the room itself:

Escape Rooms Wellington (Wellington, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-8 players (recommended 4-6) Age limit: Under 16 requires adult Difficulty: Hard Date visited: December 2025 Our final set of games on our New Zealand trip were at Wellington Escape Rooms. I thought, since we were in New Zealand, we should play a locally themed one, so I booked Operation Beehive (the “Beehive” is the Executive Wing of the New Zealand Parliament). Was it any good?   This

Escape Mate (Wellington, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 4-16 players Age limit: Recommended 8+ Difficulty: 8.5/10 Awards: TERPECA Nominee (2024) Date visited: December 2025 For our second Escape Mate room, Atlantis , we travelled south to their Victoria Street location after a visit to the Wellington Botanic Garden and lunch at Flight Coffee Hangar Cafe. This was a very hyped room, given that it has received a lot of glowing reviews from casual players and

Escape Mate (Wellington, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-6 Age limit: Recommended 8+ Difficulty: 6/10 Date visited: December 2025 We finally arrived at Wellington, the final leg of our New Zealand trip. According to my research, the dominant escape room company in the CBD area was Escape Mate with three rooms — Ancient Temple , Spaceship , and Atlantis . We initially booked all three rooms but later decided to cancel Spaceship (the lowest ranked of the t

Xcape Wellington (Lower Hutt, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-8 Age limit: Under 14s require adult in the room Difficulty: 6/10 Date visited: December 2025 This was the fifth of our 5 rooms in one day at Xcape — one of the highest rated escape room establishments in New Zealand — situated in Lower Hutt, about 15 minutes north of Wellington.   Here are my thoughts: All of Xcape’s rooms are highly rated, but this one was No. 1 on Morty in the Wellington reg

Xcape Wellington (Lower Hutt, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-8 Age limit: Under 14s require adult in the room Difficulty: 9/10 Date visited: December 2025 This was the fourth of our 5 rooms in one day at Xcape — one of the highest rated escape room establishments in New Zealand — situated in Lower Hutt, about 15 minutes north of Wellington.   Here are my thoughts: Pirate rooms are hard to get right in terms of theming and puzzles, but I think Xcape did a

Xcape Wellington (Lower Hutt, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-8 Age limit: Under 14s require adult in the room Difficulty: 8/10 Date visited: December 2025 This was the third of our 5 rooms in one day at Xcape — one of the highest rated escape room establishments in New Zealand — situated in Lower Hutt, about 15 minutes north of Wellington.   Here are my thoughts: This was another strong room, set in an abandoned insane asylum. The backstory revolves arou

Xcape Wellington (Lower Hutt, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-8 Age limit: Under 14s require adult in the room Difficulty: 7/10 Date visited: December 2025 This was the second of our 5 rooms in one day at Xcape — one of the highest rated escape room establishments in New Zealand — situated in Lower Hutt, about 15 minutes north of Wellington.   Here are my thoughts: Expectations can be a funny thing. Of all the rooms at Xcape, this art/jewel heist theme wa

Xcape Wellington (Lower Hutt, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-8 Age limit: Under 14s require adult in the room Difficulty: 6/10 Date visited: December 2025 This was the first of our 5 rooms in one day at Xcape — one of the highest rated escape room establishments in New Zealand — situated in Lower Hutt, about 15 minutes north of Wellington.   Here are my thoughts: Like all of Xcape’s rooms, we started off in a small briefing room and had to watch a video

Scapegoats Escape Rooms (Upper Hutt, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-6 Age limit: Under 14s require adult supervision Difficulty: 8/10 Date visited: December 2025 We finished The Cartel and went straight into Unholy Cottage , Scapegoats' highest rated room on Morty. This was a spooky horror room with occult themes, but it's all driven by atmosphere, with no live actors or major jump scares. Here are my thoughts: We enjoyed this one more than The Cartel,

Scapegoats Escape Rooms (Upper Hutt, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-6 Age limit: Under 14s require adult supervision Difficulty: 6/10 Date visited: December 2025 We booked a lot of escape rooms on this New Zealand trip, and the one establishment I knew the least about was Scapegoats in Upper Hutt, about a half-hour drive north of Wellington. At the time I booked, there were hardly any reviews on Morty, and I couldn't find anyone on enthusiast forums who

Confinement Escape Rooms - Taupo (Taupo, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-8 Age limit: Parental discretion advised for children aged 8-13 Difficulty: Standard (4/5), Advanced (5/5) Date visited: December 2025 When planning our New Zealand escape rooms, I mainly went for enthusiast recommendations or high Morty scores. But we were going to be staying in Taupo anyway, so I thought, "Why not book a game here?" The one we settled on was The Hunting Lodge at C

The Locked Room (Taupo, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-4 Difficulty: Hard Date visited: December 2025 When I first started researching New Zealand escape rooms, one game that kept popping up among enthusiast circles was 1950s Cold War Codebreaker at The Locked Room near Taupo, about an hour south of smelly Rotorua. It was not easy to find, as it was situated on a farm where our mobile internet reception (and thus Google Maps) was very patchy. And it's t

Escape Rooms New Zealand - Tauranga (Tauranga, New Zealand) Time limit: 90 minutes Player limit: 2-8 Difficulty: Hard Date visited: December 2025 After finishing at Get Out in Te Awamutu, we drove 90 minutes east to Tauranga, where we settled for the night. The next day — Z's 14th birthday — we went to the Tauranga branch of Escape Rooms New Zealand, intending to play The Orphan's Revenge: A Murder Mystery (a personal recommendation of the owner). This was also J's 100th ga

Get Out Escape Rooms (Te Awamutu, New Zealand) Time limit: 60 minutes Player limit: 2-7 Difficulty: Challenging Awards: TERPECA Nominee (2025) Date visited: December 2025 This one wasn't initially in our itinerary, but thanks to a major schedule stuff-up by yours truly that was discovered just a few days before departure, we ended up with a free afternoon and an extra escape room to play — which turned out to be Z's 100th game! Wanting to experience as much of New Zealand as

Escapist  (Hamilton, New Zealand) Time limit: 75 minutes Player limit: 2-6 Difficulty: Hard (5/5) Date visited: December 2025 We were very fortunate that the earlier session of Bloodstone Keep was not booked out on this particular morning, so we were able to go straight into it after completing El Dorado . This one had a vampire theme and was considered spooky but not frightening, with darkness and atmosphere but no real scares. Here are my thoughts: The theming was again v