Review: Race Across The World - The Experience (West End)

Image: CityDays/Race Across The World: The Experience

Race Across The World: The Experience (West End) is the latest city-wide scavenger hunt experience from CityDays. Following hot on the heels of the original race, which launched back in May and had racers covering a route that took in the Barbican, the City and Tower Hill, this new West End edition runs for a limited time over the festive period and covers Mayfair, Soho and Covent Garden. Taking participants through winding backstreets, past Christmas markets and down glistening thoroughfares, it's a race against not only the clock but also other teams, thanks to a digital leaderboard.

While the TV series this experience is based on has competitors racing for 50-plus days across multiple countries with little more than a map, a GPS tracker, and a bumbag full of local currency, the festive edition of the London-based race runs anywhere from 2 to 4 hours and sees those taking part cover roughly 5km on foot through Central London. Staples of the BBC series - including budget management and navigating without a map - have been carried over and make up the core of the race's experience.

For our team of three, our race began outside Green Park station. After some limbering up and motivational words, we were off into Mayfair to a local business (in our case, a quiet pub about 5 minutes from the tube station) to collect a black Race Across The World: The Experience branded envelope from behind the bar. Within it are six festive postcards from around the globe, a card recounting a trip through a Christmas market, and a sheet of printed A5 paper. The experience's instructions, which are all delivered via WhatsApp, told us to inspect the postcards closely, as they were key to discovering the first pit stop location, whilst the Christmas card and A5 sheet would be needed to solve physical puzzles later in the race.

Photo: Jamie Davies

With a destination for the first leg soon figured out, one of Race Across The World's most important components - our team's budget - came into play. Just like in the show, each team is provided with a travel budget to spend on their race, totalling £30 of in-game currency.

In each of the experience's three legs, teams are presented with two options for directions, each with differing prices. Those with the cash to spare can pay over the odds for clear and concise directions, while those looking to be more frugal can pay less for more obtuse directions that require some lateral thinking to decode. While some points throughout the race are the same for all teams, your initial selection can lead you down a very different path from those who pick the alternative, making every decision you make matter all the more.

With in-game currency prices ranging from £15 to £25 for each leg's directions, teams will also need to pick up 'work' along the way, which comes in the form of riddles and puzzles that can be done on the move to top up their budget. If the price of directions isn't already high enough to make a team's wallet cry, there are time penalties for incorrect answers and financial penalties for those who require hints or directions.

Photo: Daria Glakteeva

At the end of each leg, there's a pit stop which provides teams a chance to catch their breath, and with the clock paused, teams are free to take as long or short a break as they like before resuming the race. During each of these rest periods, an update as to your team's total time so far compared to other racers is delivered via WhatsApp, allowing you to see how efficiently you've made it through each of the legs.

Given the time of year, racing in the dark is going to be the reality for a lot of teams. Doing so presents some fun challenges when it comes to navigation and locating the necessary plaques, monuments and sculptures around town, and ups the race's difficulty in comparison to the original version. During one of the race's legs, we were tasked with reading the names attached to several busts, high above street level. Relying on the surrounding ambient light made it far harder to do than it would have been during the day, and spotting far-off street signs and landmarks is equally challenging. On the flip side, racing during daylight hours would rob teams of seeing a lot of the city's best Christmas lights, which is one of this race's biggest selling points, so choose your start time wisely.

Photo: Marc Kleen

Moving through the affluent streets of Mayfair, the backstreets of Theatreland and the less-trodden passageways of Covent Garden over the next few hours, our team made good time. Of course, there was the occasional wrong turn, but our game plan of paying the higher price for clearer directions, with additional work completed along the way to top up our budget, was paying off.

Entering the final leg, we had risen up the leaderboard from third place to first, but with only a 14-second lead, the pressure was on. After navigating around a final horde of tourists, we entered our final pit stop. All that stood between us and immortalising our names in the padlocked check-in book was one final puzzle involving the greeting card we'd been carrying with us for most of the evening. A tense few minutes followed, as we scrambled to complete our last task, and before we knew it, we were done. With our commemorative keepsakes collected from behind the bar, there was nothing left to do but celebrate our success over a drink and reflect on a job well done.

Photo: Hert Niks

While several of the locations we ended up visiting throughout the race were familiar to us from our collective years of living in London, being a local doesn't give any inherent advantage over those less familiar with the geography of London. The experience often relies on smaller back streets away from the hustle and bustle, so even the most knowledgeable Londoners (black cab drivers excluded) will likely end up somewhere they've never been before.

Although those with a competitive side will find themselves obsessing over how much time they've gained or lost in each leg and cursing every red pedestrian traffic light, we suspect even the most casual of players will enjoy seeing how they're stacking up against other racers.

Photo: Toa Heftiba

Outside of navigating the capital without a map, one of the race's biggest strengths is that it forces you to engage and look at the city around you differently. Racers will spend a lot of time searching for small details on buildings, interrogating the text on memorials and statues, and searching for blue plaques that you'd otherwise walk past without a second thought. Much like for those in the BBC series, the most rewarding moments of the experience come when you're exploring the road less travelled.

While London has no shortage of scavenger hunt experiences (CityDays has at least 12 other experiences available, with other companies offering similar themed experiences across all four corners of the city), this West End edition of Race Across The World: The Experience's combination of exploration, budget management and puzzling makes it a great family-friendly activity for those looking to get out of the house, marvel at the Christmas lights and experience the city this festive season.

★★★★

Final race time: 02:40:09

Guide: London's Best Family-Friendly Immersive Experiences (2025)

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Race Across The World: The Experience (West End) runs until 30th December 2025. Tickets are priced from £25.00 per person and can be booked via feverup.com

For more reviews of immersive experiences like Race Across The World: The Experience (West End), check out our recent Reviews.