Social Escape Rooms - Alexandria (Sydney, Australia)
Time limit: 60 minutes
Age limit: None
Player limit: 3-8 (recommended 3-5)
Difficulty: Hard (50% success rate)
Date visited: January 2025
After our Japan trip, we returned to Social Escape for their newest room, Bellamy’s Booty, a cool pirate-themed room that proved to be both challenging and fun.
Set on a ship, our team was tasked with finding pirate Captain Sam Bellamy’s treasure. The first thing I noticed was that the theming was a big step up from the only other maritime themed room we had done to date, The Curse of Davy Jones at Scarborough Fair Escape Rooms. Clearly a lot of effort was put into creating the theme, with wooden décor, genuine ropes, props you would expect to see on an old ship, excellent lighting design, and wave sound effects. The only immersion breaker was the air conditioning unit in one of the rooms, but I would take air conditioning on a hot summer day over immersion any day.
As with all of the rooms we’ve played at Social Escape thus far, Bellamy’s Booty offers a basic narrative, but the focus is definitely on the puzzles. Having done relatively well in the logic-heavy Ransom and Bank Heist, advertised as Social Escape’s most difficult rooms, we were told by the owner, Mark, that Bellamy’s Booty may be more of a challenge for us because of its more abstract puzzles. Well, he was definitely right!
There were a few puzzles in Bellamy’s Booty that really required thinking outside the box and made us scratch our heads. While not a huge room with loads of different areas, there was more than enough to keep us busy. As with Social Escape’s other rooms, there was some awesome and well-hidden tech, though most of it was mechanical and more on the low-tech side (such as padlocks).
A couple of puzzles in particular wasted the bulk of our time and we had to ask for a clue to ensure we didn’t run out of time. However, we were more impressed than frustrated by these puzzles, and were especially wowed by a cool prop that is linked to the final set of puzzles.
On the whole, we felt Bellamy’s Booty was on par with Social Escape’s TERPECA-nominated rooms, Ransom and Bank Heist, both of which are also games that offer solid theming and atmosphere but really shine because of the creative, challenging, and theme-aligned puzzles. At the end of the day, it’s all about enjoyment and fun, and we definitely had both in spades.
PS: Mark told us that he intends to eventually update this room to make it more theatrical, in the vein of The Pirates of the Caribbean. Can’t wait!
Escape time: 52 minutes out of 60
Verdict: A fun pirate-themed room with solid theming, challenging puzzles, and some really cool ideas!
Rating: 8.52
Player | Theming | Atmosphere | Puzzles | Creativity | Fun | Average |
H | 8.5 | 8.5 | 9 | 8 | 9 | 8.6 |
E | 9 | 8 | 9 | 7 | 9 | 8.4 |
Z | 9 | 8.5 | 9 | 9 | 9 | 8.9 |
J | 9 | 8.5 | 8.5 | 9 | 9 | 8.9 |
C | 8 | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 7.8 |
Rating | 8.52 |
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