Escape Room Nederland – The Dome – Escape Game Utrecht
Bunschoten / 2 – 6 Players / Price: 23 – 67 Euro per player / Rating: 10
Location: Nijverheidsweg 5b, 3751 LP Bunschoten Utrecht
Date of Play: 15.08.2019
Players: 5
Language: Dutch and English
Sometimes you hope things live up to their reputation and you’re not disappointed. Escape Room Nederland created a highly acclaimed scary room years ago with The Girl’s Room, so all eyes were on them when they opened The Dome last year. Read here to see if The Dome lives up to hype.
Escape Room Nederland is located in an industrial park near Bunschoten. In fact, you have to cross a barrier here by car, so don’t give up on your search.
To enter the location, you have to enter a door code, which is told to you by a video in Dutch at the entrance door. If your Dutch is not so fluent, this is no problem, it will also be displayed.
As soon as you have climbed the stairs, one of the largest Escape Room lobby areas there is awaits you. You can shorten your waiting time here with one of four game consoles, billiards, football, air field hockey, table tennis and much more. In the bar area you can help yourself to various drinks and snacks, which will be charged after your visit. Valuables can be stored in mandatory lockers.
Escape Room Nederland currently has three different Escape Rooms on offer. The oldest and first Escape Room in BeNeLux: The Laboratory. The highly acclaimed The Girl’s Room (see review) and the new Escape Room spectacle The Dome.
By the way, you should take some time after playing a room, because as a special service Escape Room Nederland will show you the highlights of your Escape Room stay again afterwards.
Before entering THE DOME, there is only a short standard briefing in front of the impressive entrance area. The backstory is told in an elaborately staged video. (This might have changed now in 2021 onwards)
The Dome
The Dome is known worldwide because the crime leader Hector Franssen is currently undergoing CMNT (Controlled Molecular Neuro Transmission) treatment there. During the investigation, Hector manages to sabotage the system at The Dome and eventually escapes.
As a result of the sabotage, a high dose of sodium cyclate (hallucinogen) escapes into the examination room. Sodium cyclate is the substance Hector receives during his CMNT treatment.
You and your team will be exposed to it and lose your grip on reality.
Room
Remember the first time you discovered a secret door in an Escape Room and realized there was another room? Imagine that feeling multiplied by 10 in The Dome.
It’s not easy to write about The Dome without giving too much away. Because The Dome is an incredible experience, which lives from its surprises even more than in any other Escape Room we have played. This room is everything and at the same time nothing of what you expect from an Escape Room.
The sci-fi setting is beyond reproach and as the game progresses you won’t be disappointed, but rather surprised. The Dome always manages to play with your expectations, the reference to space and time, and above all to surprise you. After a short time you get lost in the world of The Dome and don’t want to get out of it anymore, but rather penetrate deeper and deeper into it to see what other crazy ideas The Dome comes up with. Light and sound are perfectly orchestrated and round off this experience.
Puzzles
As you already learn in the briefing, ten different tasks await you in The Dome and you already know which one it is from the beginning. They are varied, challenging, and harmoniously integrated into the context of The Dome in their own way. All of these tasks can only be solved collaboratively and guarantee that every team member is 100% involved at all times. Some of the familiar puzzles have been rethought and creatively implemented in such a way that you might not realize what you’ve just solved until afterwards. Each of these 10 challenges has its own unique tone.
Gamemaster
The concept of the gamemaster was also taken to a new level for us here. This was so organically integrated into the concept of The Dome that even we weren’t clear at the end where we actually got clues and where we didn’t.
Another World – The Dome is our first 10 out of 10 points room
The Dome polarizes in the Netherlands like no other space. As with any newly opened space, there were initially things that didn’t work properly, the timing wasn’t well worked out and many also didn’t understand the story of the space. This resulted in The Dome not even being in the top 50 rooms on escapetalk.nl and now having to struggle its way to the top. All the negative points are understandable. However, the makers of The Dome have also learned and optimized the experience.
However, our experience with The Dome was one of the best experiences in an Escape Room ever, which we had so far. Because The Dome is much more than just an Escape Room, it is THE Escape Room. It is the essence of everything that makes up an Escape Room, no other room has managed to evoke this range of emotions in me and my fellow players like The Dome.
The Dome is not cold and sober, as the initial setting would have us believe. It is the projection screen of our positive and negative emotions, which we can experience in an Escape Room. Fear and anxiety can be generated relatively easily in an Escape Room. However, to actually create a full range of emotions without ever really committing to genre is unique.
We weren’t playing The Dome, The Dome was playing us. It gave us the feeling of control and success and took it away in the same moment, replacing it with helplessness and frustration.
„We’re Not in Kansas Anymore“ – The Wizard of Oz
This room had a plan for each player inside of us and executed it to perfection. It may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but we enjoyed sitting in this roller coaster of emotions and being surprised.
This room has an effect like no other Escape Room before and has created unforgettable moments for us, which other rooms may have created selectively, but never in this density. Here, space and time are made to be forgotten. Not for nothing it is called “Escape your Mind”. It is not the story on paper that makes The Dome. But how it fills it with life in its very own way and lets us players become a part of it.
The Dome is philosophical, action-packed, suspenseful, crazy and challenging. It is simply THE Escape Room par excellence.
Do you feel like going there now? Then you should not enter The Dome with less than 4 experienced players and book your experience directly on the website of Escape Room Nederland.
After we successfully faced the tests in The Dome and didn’t let ourselves be blinded by our hallucination, we dared to end the day in The Girl’s Room.
Website: https://deutsch.escaperoom.nl/
Want to read more from us? Dann folge doch Escape Maniac auf Facebook.
You find playery in our Escape Maniac Gruppe auf Facebook.
Click here to see where the room is on our personal top list.
Escape Maniac Transparency Promise: We were invited by Escape Room Nederland and did not have to pay anything to play the rooms.
