Houdini’s Escape Room Experience Nottingham: Poppa Plock’s Wonky Workshop

By | January 25, 2022

by Houdini's Escape Room Experience Nottingham (website)

Clifton Blvd, Redfield Way, Nottingham NG7 2UW

Nottingham

2-6 players

Languages: EN

60 minutes

With twisted key, you and your team will enter Poppa Plockโ€™s Wonky Workshop. Guided by Plockโ€™s outrageous ventriloquist dummy and demented dolls, the pressure is on to solve the mystery and complete his penultimate creation. If you fail, youโ€™re doomed to remain in this wind-up world forever.
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Overall rating

Rated between 3 and 3.5 out of 5

based on ratings from 26 users
combined with 12 pro reviews

Your review

Player reviews

Speedy Sloth expert rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
funnystory-driven
๐Ÿค˜The Pick of Destiny expert rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Played: 17 Feb 2023 Team size: 2
story-drivengreat hostingfamily friendly

The sound effects were way too much for us- we could barely hear ourselves think!! 

The Monkey expert rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Played: 1 Oct 2022 Team size: 2 Time taken: 45 Outcome: Successful escape!
funnygreat hostingpoor hosting

We arrived 15 minutes before scheduled time as the email mentions, along with the if you're late you will lose game time. By our official game time our GM wasn't there and we saw a different GM apologise to a group that their GM hadn't turned up and a refund would be given (after they had been sat there almost an hour) this worried me. Our GM turned up 5 minutes past our start time. Flustered and doing the pre game talk out of breath. It kind of threw me, once in the room the room was immersive and the puzzles simple enough to solve but hard enough to miss first time. Alot of the puzzles were solvable with sound clues which was a little disappointing as you were always trying to listen and if you missed something you had to wait for the next sound clue. This should be a lower score but the in game live actor (the same GM who hadn't been great pre game) was amazing. I think her name was Vicky and you could see her transform in to the character required. She made me smile all the way through how well she transformed in to her character. 

Mrs G expert rated this:Rated between 30 and 30 out of 5
Team size: 2 Outcome: Successful escape!
great hosting

We struggled to really follow this game, some of the puzzles felt a little odd as was the theming and we were becoming lost, however our gamesmaster really went above and beyond and played his part brilliantly. He had us laughing with him all the way through and this game will be memorable to us because of the great hosting. 

Anonymous experienced rated this:Rated between 25 and 25 out of 5
Played: 3 Jun 2022 Team size: 2 Time taken: 45:06 Outcome: Successful escape!
originalbroken techquite difficult
Jemileh experienced rated this:Rated between 40 and 40 out of 5
Team size: 2 Outcome: Successful escape!
Stevie Davies expert rated this:Rated between 25 and 25 out of 5
Played: December 2021 Team size: 2 Time taken: 44m Outcome: Successful escape!
illogicalbroken techplain
Flutter.dumplin experienced rated this:Rated between 40 and 40 out of 5
Played: 30 Jan 2020 Team size: 4 Time taken: 58 minutes Outcome: Successful escape!
originalimmersiveintense๐Ÿ˜จcreepy
Roory experienced rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Played: 27/01/2018 Team size: 5 Time taken: 55.19 Outcome: Successful escape!
Ben Franklin rated this:Rated between 35 and 35 out of 5
Played: September 2018 Team size: 4 Time taken: 1hr Outcome: Successful escape!
The design of the room was great in general - loved the animatronics and the overall idea of monster construction was cool. That aspect was well put together and the story felt logical in its presentation. We really enjoyed the puzzle involving the pull strings, although some of the other puzzles (towards the beginning) felt weirdly obtuse in comparison. There were some neat touches throughout though, and one fun 'jump scare' moment that made us laugh. Few issues for us that stopped it from being 5 stars: *Music was too loud at times, making the final puzzle almost impossible to solve due to its audio nature. *The final puzzle had some issues due to the components not working correctly, and we had to have help to complete it. This made it all a bit anti-climactic and my honest feeling is that it needs a rethink *Our host was good and kept in character well, but a few of our group complained about him having very cheesy breath which made the opening close-quarters moments a bit sickening for them. A strange complaint, but felt it was worth mentioning!
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Reviews by escape room review sites

Handmade Mysteries are famous for the quality of their hosts, who are costumed and in character from the outset, and Poppa Plock upholds that reputation - Wynne was excellent.

The large space is a big change, and an improvement, on Handmade's previous game, which for bigger teams could get a little cramped. It's also packed with gadgets and geegaws. With loud audio and a stream of suggestions from the hint doll in the corner, it approaches overwhelming, at least until you start to get a grip on...

The second outing from Handmade Mysteries. Poppa Plock was a big step up in puzzling but with six people in the room and an almost entirely linear flow, the game always felt a little crowded and hard to engage with. Theatre was, once again, a strong point but for me not up there with Lady Chastity.
Handmade Mysteries seem to take a dose of escape room and a pinch of theatre and blend them together to create something truly delectable.
We take on the challenge of the twisted toy-maker Poppa Plock to try and escape his sinister toy shop.

A few months ago I noticed that Houdini's Escape Room were advertising a new room called Poppa Plocks Wonky Workshop, an 18+ room and the adverts for it gave it a dark tone, so of course, once our busy October period was through I had to make sure that my first stop after scare season was to Houdini's to experience this room. Poppa Plock's Wonky Workshop is actually a relocated escape from from the now non operational Handmade Myserties. I met up with some friends and we entered this wonderful escape room. We had all previously done at least one other room by them in the fantastic RMS Titanic so all of us knew the level that this company could do. We arrived and were greeted by a wonderful guy who checked us in and told us to take a seat. After a small wait and a couple of games of Pucket we were taken to the briefing cinema room. We filled out the forms and had a lovely chat with the guy (Whose name escapes me, sorry). He told us to wait here and we would be collected for our room shortly.



Poppa Plock's eerie creation is part-Pinocchio, part-Frankenstein's monster. And it's unfinished! Whether wisely or unwisely, we went to help finish this twisted toy - but did it finish us first?

Houdinis Escape Tenpin Southampton: Poppa Plockโ€™s Wonky Workshop

November 2022

Overview 

This was third visit to Houdiniโ€™s in Southampton after visiting Onslow Road to complete Titanic and the previous day taking on Extinct at the Tenpin location. Due to the escape rooms being located at a huge bowling alley, there is plenty of parking on site. There is a big waiting area with plenty of seating before being taken into the start of the main brief. There is a refreshment area and a sideboard selling a lot of home escape games. We were taken to an old cinema style room with popcorn machine and cinema screen ready to show us our brief. The host was brilliant in going straight into character and taking us to our room to start.

Room impression

The room was decorated brilliantly, completely emerging yourself into an old toy workshop with dusty old games, cabinets and dim lighting. It was hard to tell if some of the props were old and tattered and needed replacing or whether it was part of the immersive experience. Our game master set up the scene well, explaining what our mission was. We havenโ€™t done a game based on an old toy workshop and we all enjoyed exploring the different areas of the workshop and being immersed into the theme of it all with toy music being played in the background. 

Puzzles

There was nothing groundbreaking in the puzzles of this room, padlocks mixed in with some coded games and some old fashioned arcade games for fun. You can easily see your progress in the room with the big lights being lit when you completed a puzzle. One thing we did enjoy was the game master coming in and out of the room completely in character. Normally you would think this would ruin the immersive experience but it actually added a nice element to the game and something we have not experienced before. Some negative points, one of the games broke when we were attempting it and it took the game master to come in and fix it half way through and one puzzle in particular was really tricky for us to solve due to poor lighting and positioning of some of the elements of the puzzle. This put quite a big dampener on the room for us as we spent a lot of time on this puzzle and made us being very close the finish line in terms of time. The finish however was really good and again, something we have not done before.

Game Master Clues

We had to ask for some help on the one puzzle mentioned above due to us simply not being able to work it out and the game master came into the room in character to assist us. She also came in to the room on another occasion to point us in the right direction when we deviated but for the most of the game, she left us to it.

Round Up

After completing Extinct and Titanic over the course of the weekend, we did have high hoped for this room and if we being honest, we felt it lacked a little something compared to the others. The a puzzle breaking and one of them appearing to be very difficult to solve for a combination of reasons, it just put a dampener on the game. During a few moments of the game where the puzzles were linear, a few of the areas were quite tight and some of us were stood around watching whilst others were completing tasks. For bigger teams, this might be much more of an issue. None the less, the experience of the room and the theme were good and it is worth trying when visiting Southampton.

You have to hand it to Handmade Mysteries, they put a brilliant amount of effort into crafting the theatrical experience of their escape rooms. For the immersive element of escape rooms they are second to none in London.

See also

Other copies of this game in other locations:(Different copies of the same game sometimes have significant differences.)