Breakout Chester: Cursed Carnival

By | March 20, 2019

by Breakout Chester (website)

42 Bridge Street Row, CH1 1NN

Chester

2-5 players

60 minutes

You and your friends have won a prize at the local carnival, but it's a prize with a difference. Since you've taken it home, you have been tormented by strange dreams and a haunting voice that tells you that you must return your prize within 7 days. You return to the carnival on the 7th day and enter the old repair shed where you must solve the mystery with only an hour left before the clock strikes midnight. Can you break the curse in 60 minutes or will your nightmares come true...
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Overall rating

Rated between 3 and 3.5 out of 5

based on ratings from 32 users
combined with 6 pro reviews

Your review

Player reviews

thehermit experienced rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Team size: 3 Outcome: Successful escape!

We played forgotten to not long after it opened to the public, and the room itself looks really great. However it felt like there was a few clunky puzzles in here that left us scratching our heads and needed explaining.

Philip & Gemma rated this:
Played: 30 Dec 2017 Team size: 2 Outcome: Successful escape!
value for moneyimmersivequite easy😨creepy

This room has a great carnival theme, with a slighty creepy undertone (mostly having to carry a creepy doll around with you). 

The space seems big as you are constantly moving into new sections of the game. The puzzles aren't particuarly hard but are mostly themed well to the room. 

The room was enjoyable and had enough to do that it was satisfying to work through and complete. It is definitely suitable to beginner players.

EscapeCarrtists rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Played: 10 Jul 2019 Team size: 2 Time taken: 57:33 Outcome: Successful escape!
cleverstory-drivenquite difficult

Played this with a newbie and thoroughly enjoyed the atmosphere and puzzles. Kept us on our toes throughout and our own stupid mistakes made us take longer. 

Anonymous experienced rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Team size: 3 Outcome: Successful escape!
Chris Metcalfe experienced rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Team size: 5 Outcome: Successful escape!
value for moneygreat hosting
Arjay Henshall expert rated this:Rated between 40 and 40 out of 5
Played: 24/07/2020 Team size: 2 Time taken: 44.26 Outcome: Successful escape!

Do not be fooled. This room is rated 3/5 difficulty and posed as one of the easiest games on their website, however it was not easy by any stretch of the imagine. This room has LOADS to do.

Some rooms have a great mixture of math puzzles log puzzles, obvservation, physical puzzles etc. Cursed Carnival is very VERY padlock heavy (which we dont actually mind) and involves a lot of searching, (something else we dont actually mind)

Its greatly on theme throughout and the puzzles are perfectly logical. This actually turned out to be our favourite room of 4 that we played in one day (disturbed, dark magic and excalibur being the others)

Some people may be put off by the theme, however its purely there for theming and storyline, and not scary at all so perfectly suitable for all

TheEscapeBoomers expert rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Team size: 2
beautifulgreat hosting

Nothing special, but another great starter game from BOL.

Jess_keds expert rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Outcome: Successful escape!
funnyfamily friendlyvery easy
Ollie C rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Played: 21 Jul 2019 Team size: 3 Time taken: 48:15 Outcome: Successful escape!
originalfamily friendlyquite easy

Fun room which will probably be great for beginners. Its quite linier in its flow without much walking backwards and forwards so always feels like you're progressing. The carnival theme is kept well throughout and it has a nice mix of puzzles that everyone can get involved in. The name "cursed" carnival and the description make it sound quite scary but it's not at all and would be suitable for families to enjoy. We had fun in this room and would recommend it.

grogu42 experienced rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
matt_keds expert rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Played: 20 Aug 2018 Team size: 2 Outcome: Successful escape!
funnyimmersivegreat hosting

#7

A fun experience here, they went all out with the decoration and it looks great, wasn’t too difficult so I would recommend this before tackling something like Forsaken or Excalibur. Don’t be fooled by the ‘Cursed’ moniker though,  this is family friendly.  Would recommend if you’re heading to Breakout.

roberts0502 experienced rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Played: 16 Nov 2019 Team size: 5 Time taken: 45:00:00 Outcome: Successful escape!
immersiveintense👻scary
Anonymous rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Played: 29 Sep 2018 Team size: 3 Outcome: Successful escape!
lizratesrooms experienced rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Team size: 2 Time taken: 45 Outcome: Successful escape!
family friendly😨creepy
Anonymous experienced rated this:Rated between 40 and 40 out of 5
Team size: 2 Outcome: Successful escape!
great hosting
Jess Phillips rated this:Rated between 25 and 25 out of 5
Team size: 2 Time taken: 59 mins Outcome: Successful escape!
overpricedplain😨creepy
Anonymous rated this:Rated between 20 and 20 out of 5
Played: 2016 Team size: 4 Outcome: Successful escape!

We escaped the Cursed Carnival at Breakout Liverpool back in 2016 with Team Raging Clue. We picked this room as it was the easiest one according to the stats, so we can slowly and surely build up to the most difficult rooms.   The layout of the room itself wasn’t that bad, with new surprises at each corner and a nice carnival soundtrack. We had a good fair amount of laughs throughout our 44 minutes of game but I regret few things: – the lights being maybe too bright indulging a bit the atmosphere of what could have been a really creepy carnival room; – some puzzles were a bit far-fetched (and even after sleeping on it, we still haven’t understand their logic). – and finally, the ending was a bit of a let down: the door opened by itself before we finished completing the last puzzle… !   We first thought someone opened it by mistake as we were still trying to sort out our last puzzle!

Wesley Mead expert rated this:Rated between 40 and 40 out of 5
Scotus0 expert rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Played: 01/09/2019 Team size: 2 Time taken: 42:07 Outcome: Successful escape!

Cursed? More Like Cute...

I went for this room as I like a spooky challenge. Little did I know...

Story

Return to the cursed carnival to rescue a doll possessed by a girl...or is that a girl trapped in a doll? Even so, our Game Operator said our mission was to find said doll to sell it on the black market. Who knows.

Puzzles

Straightforward, standard solving with the odd carnival game or two thrown in.

Mise-en-scène

There were plenty of circus-themed articles, but none had been given the horror twist I expected. The Hall of Mirrors was a highlight.

Final Comments

We bossed it as a team of two. No one else is needed. In relation to 'Cursed', the name is very inaccurate, but as for 'Carnival', it's spot on. The difficulty rating should be two stars, not three. Overall, a chilled and amusing room.

ratsontour expert rated this:Rated between 40 and 40 out of 5
Played: 13 Oct 2019 Team size: 3 Outcome: Successful escape!
quite easy
Simon (The Overthinkers) expert rated this:Rated between 40 and 40 out of 5
Played: 15 Apr 2022 Team size: 3 Time taken: 24:20 Outcome: Successful escape!
funnyfamily friendlyquite easy
grogu42 experienced rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
flyingoctopus expert rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Team size: 2 Outcome: Successful escape!
quite easy

A fun, slightly eerie experience. The carnival theme is great throughout. The decor and props work well to create  a good atmosphere. I was expecting it to be a bit scary and jumpy, but it wasn't.

There are some nice games in here and it kept the 2 of us entertained. A fairly easy game though, larger experienced teams may finish it quite quickly. 

Sabrina (The Overthinkers) expert rated this:Rated between 40 and 40 out of 5
Played: 15 Apr 2022 Team size: 3 Time taken: 24:20 Outcome: Successful escape!
funnyfamily friendly
knoh39 experienced rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Team size: 2 Outcome: Successful escape!
family friendly
MerseyMarauders expert rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Team size: 3
originalfamily friendlyquite easy
MerseyMarauders expert rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Team size: 3 Outcome: Successful escape!
originalimmersivefamily friendly
TheLosersClub rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Played: 7 Aug 2019 Team size: 4 Time taken: 37 Outcome: Successful escape!
immersivestory-drivenquite easy😨creepy

The first room we ever did

Really enjoyed the production on this one.

Was fairly easy which in hindsight was good as our first room.

Was not scary really though

TheEscapeBoomers expert rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Team size: 2 Outcome: Successful escape!

Great introduction game - Easy for experienced players.

Anonymous rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Outcome: Successful escape!
EscapeCarrtists rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Played: 7 Jun 2019 Team size: 3 Time taken: 56:17 Outcome: Successful escape!
good decorquite difficult😨creepy

Played this room as a group of 3, for a three star rated room it’s definitely one of the harder ones. Plenty of puzzles to solve the room decorations matched the theme perfectly

Reviews by escape room review sites

This room was okay, but it could have been so much more! Click the link to find out our thoughts!

A fun and lower difficulty room that is great for beginners and surprisingly very family-friendly, despite its supposedly creepy theme.

Rated as the easiest of Breakout Liverpool's games, we added Cursed Carnival to our schedule partly for the theme and partly just because it was available at a convenient slot time. With most of Breakout's games being on the easy side for experienced players, I was expecting Carnival to be brief and insubstantial, but was pleased to discover that it's actually one of their better games, and not noticeably shorter.

Every now and again an escape game gives you an item or clue before you go into t...

A reasonably well themed, not very scary carnival game. Good puzzles and a reasonable flow made this an enjoyable experience.

We have sinister dreams about a doll possessed by a little girl that wants us to help free her from a carnival. Can we save her?

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