Matthew BaileySo Katie is taking the boys to her parent’s house in France for a week over Easter and I am being left to do several jobs around the house. This also means again sadly no holiday marathon from me but I promise I will get back to more regular posting soon
(I am hoping to finally set up that website to archive all of my old posts whilst everyone is away)
Either way because of this we had Easter this Sunday rather than next Sunday.
Why is this being posted here you ask?
Well in the Bailey household, the Easter Bunny essentially spends the Saturday night after the kids are in bed turning the house into a cross between Crystal Maze and the Krypton Factor (no simple egg hunt around the garden for us).
Played by Jack(7), Toby(4) and “supported” by Henry(1)
This year to help facilitate this I bought “Spy Code Operation Escape Room” and thought I would do a review here of what is a VERY mixed bag of bits.
So I didn’t use these in the way they are supposed to be used but essentially there is a time on a strap with a key lock that you are meant to put around one player. In my case, I put it around a box containing 3 chocolate bunnies that would have been locked had they not solved the puzzle. The locking mechanism is very cool and when activates starts ticking down like something out of “Juggernaut”. The strap is a little loose but its fine and works well.
You then have 3 challenges to try and get the key. The first is a cage that has the key in the middle. You then use these 2 poles to try and fiddle the key out of one of the exits. Obviously it requires you not just pick it up and tipping it over but if you follow the rules it works well.
You then have a device that you put the key in and then set the number on the dial to a number of different puzzle cards. Each card corresponds to an A-D answer. If you get it right the draw to the next key opens up a 1/3 of the way. So you need to get 3 correct in a row. Get it wrong and it snaps back. Super cool mechanism and works really well. This was perfect once the boys found the clue cards submerged in a big bucket of orbeez (that later got spread around the kitchen floor by Henry(1) (but mum gave in and paid Jack £5 to clear them up))
The third thing that I didn’t actually end up using is
a disc with lots of doors. The idea is that you use the key to unlock the doors and then open up to 3 doors which gives you a clue to narrow down which door the key is behind. If you do not get there in 3 tries you are supposed to close the doors spin the disc (to change locations) and try again. Conceptually it’s fine but unlike the other 2 it relies on you putting the doors back down and not cheating. Equally the doors are super weak and constantly break off and have to be put back on. This one is pretty crappy to be honest hence why I didn’t actually use it in the hunt.
Overall 3 out of 4 things in this set are super cool. I paid £12 for it from TK Maxx (and it seems to be gettable online for about that) so was money well spent the boys loved the puzzles, unlocking the bonnies and eventually getting the clue to lead them to their larger eggs and an Easter Pinata.
Since the hunt, Jack has enjoyed strapping other things up and then seeing if he can solve all the puzzles in the time limit (max 999 seconds-ish)
It’s all very plasticky but 3 out of the 4 work well.
My other issue is all 3 keys are the same so it relies on the child not using the first key to open the box and skip the other 2 boxes. (i did it so they didn’t find the box until after they had the keys from the other challenges).
I think if you made it into a larger thing there is a lot to recommend but I think as a thing on its own there is not a lot here to warrant a purchase although it is super cool… I dunno.. kinda sorta recommendation.
Happy Easter and if anyone else does anything board game-related I’d love to see 
