A bar and escape-room venue on City Island – the modern craze for puzzle-solving ‘lockdown’ games, on a river-encircled peninsula
Lockdown at City Island holds three hundred and sixty-five reviews and a 4.6 – a strong score on a good sample – and it combines a bar with one of the great modern entertainment crazes, on one of London’s most distinctive new neighbourhoods: the “lockdown” escape-room game, on the river-encircled peninsula of City Island.
The escape room craze
“Lockdown” names the venue’s central attraction: the escape room, one of the great entertainment crazes of recent years. In an escape room, a group of players is “locked” into a themed room and must work together to solve a series of puzzles, riddles, clues and challenges in order to “escape” within a set time limit – usually an hour of frantic, exciting, collaborative puzzle-solving. It is a genuinely brilliant format for a group – combining teamwork, problem-solving, excitement, and a real sense of adventure and achievement, all in an immersive, themed setting. The escape room has boomed across the world in recent years, becoming one of the most popular of all group activities – and “Lockdown” is the perfect name for such a venue, capturing the thrilling premise of being locked in and racing to escape.
Games and drinks
Combining escape rooms with a bar makes for exactly the kind of “competitive socialising” experience this survey has met throughout the Greenwich and Docklands area – the active, playful, group-focused night out, combining a challenge or game with drinks and a social atmosphere. The formula is appealing: a group can test their wits against the escape room’s puzzles, then celebrate (or commiserate) over cocktails at the bar, making for a memorable, active, sociable evening. It is the modern reinvention of going out – not just drinking, but doing something together, with the drinks as the warm social glue. “Lockdown” offers exactly this – the thrill of the escape room, and the conviviality of the bar.
City Island
The venue’s setting is one of London’s most distinctive new neighbourhoods: City Island, a remarkable development on a peninsula of the River Lea, near where it meets the Thames, almost entirely encircled by water and connected to the mainland by a bridge – so that it is, in effect, a small island. This river-encircled peninsula has been developed as a striking, self-contained new neighbourhood – colourful modern buildings, home to the English National Ballet and other creative institutions, in a genuinely unusual island setting. It is one of the most distinctive of London’s new riverside developments – a little island of modern life, encircled by the waters of the Lea and the Thames. To find an escape-room bar called “Lockdown” on this near-island is rather fitting – the “locked in” theme chiming with the island setting, the peninsula encircled by water like the escape room’s locked door.
There is a genuine appeal to the whole thing – the thrilling escape-room challenge, the conviviality of the bar, the distinctive island setting. The strong score suggests a genuinely good and popular venue, offering an active, memorable, sociable night out on the unusual island of the river. It is exactly the kind of modern, playful, experience-focused venue that has transformed going out – and “Lockdown,” on its river-encircled island, offers it with a fitting name and setting. The Prat’s desk accepts the challenge, and sets the timer.
The bar
A strong, well-regarded escape-room bar doing a good 4.6 across a good sample, aptly named “Lockdown” – combining the thrilling escape-room craze with a bar, on the river-encircled peninsula of City Island.
Verdict
Strong, well-regarded, and aptly named – Lockdown, an escape-room bar combining puzzle-solving thrills with drinks, fittingly set on the near-island of City Island.
Go to Lockdown at City Island for the escape-room challenge and a celebratory cocktail, and enjoy the fitting name – “locked in” to solve the puzzles, on the peninsula encircled by the waters of the river.
Alan Nafzger was born in Lubbock, Texas, the son Swiss immigrants. He grew up on a dairy in Windthorst, north central Texas. He earned degrees from Midwestern State University (B.A. 1985) and Texas State University (M.A. 1987). University College Dublin (Ph.D. 1991). Dr. Nafzger has entertained and educated young people in Texas colleges for 37 years. Nafzger is best known for his dark novels and experimental screenwriting. His best know scripts to date are Lenin’s Body, produced in Russia by A-Media and Sea and Sky produced in The Philippines in the Tagalog language. In 1986, Nafzger wrote the iconic feminist western novel, Gina of Quitaque. He currently lives in Holloway, North London. Contact: [email protected]
