If you have never been to Billing Aquadrome before, its a fairly unique place. It’s a sprawling caravan site with a leisure centre, theme park, railway and large central lake. There are on site pubs and loads of open spaces. It’s definitely the sort of place you visited as a kid in the 90’s when you went to the seaside and it hasn’t changed much in the last 20 years. The surprising thing is, this place is in central Northamptonshire, and rather than crashing waves, your more likely to hear the sound of the M1. Tucked away at the back of this site, just behind the big ferris wheel, is Trapp’d Billing.
We had been to Billing before, and so it’s fair to say when we learned they had an escape room onsite, we were expecting a basic room at best. Having read the (extremely) comprehensive back story online, we couldn’t help but be sceptical that anyone could pull off a convincing Arctic plane crash room, let alone in Billing. Waiting for the inevitable disappointment… we were taken to the room.
Wow… We were in the Arctic. Well, we were still in Billing but they’ve only gone and pulled off the polar feel. As the game starts, the first thing we have to appreciate is the scale of this room. Its HUGE. It’s also cold. The air con was whacked up and it really convincingly (but not uncomfortably) gave a sense of being in the arctic. As did the fake snow, we’ve never been in a room with that before! In fact the only thing that gave the theme up a little was the ceiling. Ordinarily, its a bit harsh to rate the ceiling, but the game here brings you pretty close to it.
Polar theme successful, lets talk about the plane crash. It’s definitely there, but a bit less convincingly than the arctic. We would have liked to see more rubble and debris. One row of chairs, some scattered clothes and bags give some sense of disaster, but a little more would go a long way to stop the room feeling sparse. A large section of plane wreckage site to one side of the room, and whilst impressive from the outside, when the game takes you inside, the MDF is unpainted and the illusion lost a little. Overall however, we still agree that this is an impressive theme and on the whole, successfully immerses you in the story.