The team
Ioan builds every room by hand in the workshop behind the lobby; Mali and eight game masters run them, one to a room, on the cameras and the radio for every second of every game.
Founder and builder. Every room, every lock, every puzzle
A theatre set builder for fifteen years at the Millennium Centre and the New Theatre before he played his first escape room in Budapest and came home thinking he could do it better. Ioan opened the Vault in 2017 in the old strongroom under Church Street, builds every room in the workshop behind the lobby, and tests each one on forty teams before it opens. He collects locks; there are three hundred in the workshop.
Head game master. The cameras, the clues, the briefings and the rota
Came to the Vault in 2018 from improv comedy and a drama degree at the Royal Welsh College, which is why the watchman on the radio is so good. Mali runs the team of eight game masters, writes the briefings, decides the clue rules and does most of the team-building debriefs, where her timing with the footage clips is the thing companies remember. She has watched more than ten thousand games.
The game masters
One game master to a room, on four cameras and a microphone, for the whole hour. They know where you are stuck before you do, and they can stop the clock if a prop fails.
The watchman in the Night Safe, the chief clerk in the Coal Exchange, the base operator in Signal Lost. Mali writes the clue scripts; most game masters are actors.
First-aid trained, fire-marshal trained, and the exit button in every room is checked before every game. If anyone is unwell or anxious, the game master is in the room within seconds.
Between games, every lock relocked, every drawer closed, every clue back in its place, checked against a list. That is why the slots are 75 minutes apart.
The rooms page shows every free slot today and tomorrow, room by room; the booking page works out the price for your group. We confirm by email within the hour, and anything starting in the next hour is a phone call.