Review: The Crystal Maze Live Experience

As an immersive version of the 90's TV series, The Crystal Maze Live Experience delivers on every front and allows guests to live out their dreams of stepping into The Crystal Dome.

Photo: The Crystal Maze Live Experience

For those of a certain age, The Crystal Maze needs little introduction. A staple of 90’s British TV, the Channel 4 game show stood head and shoulders above every other show on the air at the time and saw huge success throughout its six-series run, with millions tuning in every week.

Each episode of the original TV series saw a new team tackle a mix of mental, physical and skill-based challenges spread across five themed zones in an attempt to secure crystals and win big in The Crystal Dome - a huge glass geodesic sphere in which teams attempted to grab as many gold tickets as possible.

The Crystal Maze Live Experience - first launched in 2016 by Little Lion Entertainment after a successful Indiegogo crowdfunding campaign - reimagines the series as an immersive experience, with teams taking on the roles of contestants. Alongside the London edition on Shaftesbury Avenue, a Manchester version operates out of a former Granada TV soundstage on Lower Byrom St, a short walk from the city centre.

As part of the Live Experience, teams of up to eight people have 75 minutes to play through a series of fast-paced challenges under the guidance of their dedicated Maze Master and take on The Crystal Dome. Mirroring the original TV series, the venue is divided into the Medieval, Aztec, Future, Industrial and Water Zones, all recreated with remarkable attention to detail. At times, it genuinely feels as though you've stepped back into the early 90's.

Photo: The Crystal Maze Live Experience

The experience begins in a sparsely decorated waiting room, where guests are shown a VHS-quality montage of clips from the original series. Focusing largely on the show's original host, Richard O'Brien, and his humorous asides as teams were focused on the challenges, it serves as a nostalgia-fuelled reminder for those who've seen the original series and a solid primer for those going in blind. The video's conclusion sees O'Brien briefly reprise his role as host to hand over the keys to the Maze to a new Maze Master, who then enters the room and introduces themselves.

During our visit to the London version of the experience, our Maze Master was Banjo, a laid-back, sarcastic Australian who, inexplicably, pulled off wearing wrap-around sunglasses indoors with ease. After being asked to introduce ourselves and share our spirit animal (For us: a giraffe; for Banjo: a burrito, in case you were curious..), Banjo asked for a team name and for our group to select a team captain.

Throughout The Crystal Maze Live, the Maze Master remains with each group for the duration, oversees which games each team will play, explains the rules, and leads teams through the disorientating warren of corridors and tunnels with a huge amount of energy. Regardless of which Maze Master you get, they act as a cheerleader for the team, spurring you on during the challenges, commiserating when things don't go to plan, and improvising based on the team's comments and observations throughout.

To squeeze every ounce of fun possible out of the experience, we'd recommend bantering and joking with them whenever the opportunity arises, as you'll get back what you put in, and building a good rapport with your Maze Master will enhance nearly every aspect of the experience.

Photo: The Crystal Maze Live Experience

Once teams arrive in their first themed zone, the games begin, with the team captain selecting who will take on each challenge. Built into each room are hatches, where the rest of the team can look on and support their teammate - either with instructions or enthusiastic encouragement and cheers.

Every challenge in The Crystal Maze Live falls into one of four categories - Physical, Mental, Skill and Mystery. Exactly what each game entails remains unknown until the player enters the space, and the range of challenges on offer across all five themed zones varies wildly, featuring everything from cryptic riddles and nursery rhymes to climbing walls and cannons. There are also far more games available than a team can complete in their allotted time, so repeat visits will likely provide new challenges.

Unlike traditional escape rooms, where deciphering the objective can take several minutes, every challenge in The Crystal Maze can be understood in a matter of seconds. Though that's not to say they're always easy to complete...

Photo: The Crystal Maze Live Experience

One of the enduring joys of the original TV series was that, often, the teams were pretty useless when it came to the challenges. You'd regularly find yourselves screaming at your TV as teams failed to complete simple tasks and swear that if you were playing, you'd breeze through the challenges.

Back in 2024, we discussed how confident we were going into Taskmaster: The Live Experience, only to be quickly humbled. It brings us no joy to share that history repeated itself with our visit to The Crystal Maze Live Experience...

On more than one occasion, we managed to complete the challenge but failed to grab the crystal before leaving the room - something that our Maze Master took great pleasure in pointing out multiple times.

Seemingly, every challenge throughout the venue is available to teams as they move from zone to zone, so the Maze Master can recalibrate the selection of games to ensure teams have a positive experience. In our case, a four-challenge run of losses was quickly followed by a sustained run of successes, likely due to Banjo taking pity on us and presenting us with easier challenges.

While players thankfully can't get 'locked in' permanently if they fail to make it out of the room in time like in the original series, a crystal is deducted from the team's running total in exchange for their freedom, which adds an extra level of stress and jeopardy to each challenge.

Photo: The Crystal Maze Live Experience

Alongside the challenges, The Crystal Maze Live Experience has ensured that the transition from one zone to another matches the feel of the original series. While some are comically lo-fi, including a balance beam across a floor-projected lake ("Don't get your shoes wet", warned Banjo), others are far more elaborate.

Entering the Aztec Zone involves sliding down a drop slide; while reaching the Ocean Zone requires climbing down a fairly lengthy ladder. Elsewhere, tunnels and crawl spaces connect different sections of the venue. They all add to the experience's persistent feeling of being constantly on the move, and when accompanied by the show's theme tune, cement the idea that guests have truly stepped into the original TV series.

After completing the final zone, teams are led towards the experience's centrepiece - The Crystal Dome. With the amount of time inside the Dome dictated by how many crystals have been earned, teams can expect to get anywhere from 20 to 60 seconds to gather and bank as many silver and gold foil tickets as possible as they're blown around the space. It's a a loud and chaotic scramble to grab as many pieces as possible, with tickets swirling all around players, often moving at such a speed that they're impossible to catch.

Photo: The Crystal Maze Live Experience

Nostalgic, light-hearted and incredibly faithful to the original TV series, The Crystal Maze Live Experience captures the spirit and chaotic energy of the original series and translates it into an outstanding live experience. Whether you grew up watching the show or are only just discovering it for the first time, it's a hugely enjoyable 75 minutes that flies by almost as quickly as the foil tickets do.

★★★★½

[Tickets gifted in exchange for an honest review]

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The Crystal Maze Live Experiences runs on Shaftesbury Avenue in London and Lower Byrom St in Manchester. Tickets are priced from £47.00 per person in London and £39.00 in Manchester. For more information and to book tickets, visit the-crystal-maze.com