Scarborough Fair Escape Rooms (Sydney, Australia)
Time limit: 60 minutes
Age limit: None (children require an adult)
Player limit: 2-6
Difficulty: 3.5/5
Date visited: October 2024
Having grown up in the Shire, it was exciting to see a new escape room establishment in Caringbah called Scarborough Escape Rooms, which opened in April 2024. Despite hearing some mixed early reviews, we thought we’d give it a try when we were in the neighbourhood visiting my sister. It ended up being a group of 6, with 2 adults (me and my brother-in-law) and 4 kids (Z, J, and their two cousins). Their fourth room (out of 8 planned rooms) opened on the day of our visit, but we decided to go with The Curse of Davy Jones, their best-rated room on Morty.
Scarborough definitely has potential. It's got plenty of parking, with a nice-looking reception area styled like a carnival tent, a professional website, and a really nice and friendly owner who clearly has a lot of passion and ambition. We also really liked their briefing room, a mini cinema where we watched a video detailing all the usual escape room guidelines as well as our room’s background story and mission.
The room itself was decent but could do with some enhancements and tweaks. A name like The Curse of Davy Jones conjures up a lot of images, but none of the images I had in my mind could be found in the room. It’s essentially a basic maritime theme tied together by a loose narrative thread that never felt fleshed out, engaging, or coherent. The best rooms we’ve been to felt designed from the ground up and crafted with exquisite props and attention to detail, giving off a strong atmosphere and sense of immersion. The Curse of Davy Jones looked and felt more like a standard office that has been decorated with furniture and props that align with the theme.
That said, we still had fun because of the puzzles, definitely the strongest aspect of the room. We were told before going in that it’s a busy room, with 20 puzzles to solve in 60 minutes. There were some interesting concepts and ideas we had not encountered before (including our first experience with the dreaded directional lock), with a mix of traditional and hi-tech puzzles, different types of padlocks, and a really challenging dexterity task that requires several people to complete (and was extra difficult with kids). The problem is that some of the puzzles don’t make a lot of sense in the space. At times, it felt like the designer came across some cool puzzle ideas and technology, and designed the theme around these things rather than the other way around.
Unfortunately, the tech did fail us a couple of times (we knew it was eventually going to happen to us). The first was in the briefing room before we started (never a good sign), and the second was at a pivotal juncture of the game, and our GM had to come in and manually bypass it so we could move on. He was kind enough to give us a few extra minutes as we ran out of time towards the end.
My brother-in-law and his son, both first-timers, really enjoyed the room; his daughter also liked it and said it was much better than the only other one she had done before (I believe it was Alice in Puzzleland at Escape Hunt). For myself, Z, and J, The Curse of Davy Jones was one of the weaker rooms we have done. That said, we are not averse to trying out some of their other rooms in the future, but we might wait a little while to see if any of their new rooms get rave reviews or if their existing rooms get upgraded. My preference is for Scarborough to focus on enhancing and perfecting their existing rooms as opposed to keep launching new rooms. If The Curse of Davy Jones is any indication, the potential is definitely there, but more work needs to be done.
Escape time: 63 minutes out of 60 (we got some extra time, partially due to faulty tech)
Rating: 7.6
Player | Theming | Atmosphere | Puzzles | Creativity | Fun | Average |
H | 7 | 6.5 | 8 | 7.5 | 7.5 | 7.3 |
Z | 7.5 | 7.5 | 8.5 | 7.5 | 8 | 7.8 |
J | 8 | 8 | 7 | 8 | 8 | 7.7 |
Rating | 7.6 |
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