I did The Crystal Maze Experience in Manchester
Dear Diary. My favourite TV program was The Crystal Maze. It involved teams of six strangers playing games to win crystals, which converted into seconds in the Crystal Dome. If the contestants were smart, they could win prizes, but usually, the contestants were thick and went home with nothing. Like 16-year-old Debbie who got locked in because she couldn't move her fat arse fast enough up the ladder, or 28-year-old Dipshit from Ilford who spent three minutes on his hands and knees looking for the crystal around the room's skirting boards when the crystal was on the table right in front of him.
I wanted to be a contestant on The Crystal Maze. I knew I could do better than a lot of the real contestants. I would've shown them. I would've gotten all the crystals they could have ever wanted.
Well, today I finally lived out my dream: I challenged The Crystal Maze. Or at least, I did The Crystal Maze Experience in Manchester, which is like The Crystal Maze except you don't win anything, and you have to pay to go on it.
My dad, older sister, brother, and niece came as well. Plus two strangers who had booked the same slot as us: a dad and daughter called Simon and Ella.
Our host was a man called Rocco. He was wearing a bowler hat. I guess they couldn't afford Richard O'Brien, so we had Rocco instead.
"I'm Rocco, and I'm your games master," said Rocco in a fake New York accent, like a Prohibition-era gangster. ("I'm a New Yaaawker, capisce?") "Now, which one'a youse the team captain?"
"I am," I said.
"C'mere and stand ova here for me, will ya?"
I got up and stood next to Rocco.
"What's your name, kid?"
"Paul."
"Hmm. You got a nickname, kid?"
"Not really."
"Well I'm gonna call you Paulie."
I wished he wouldn't call me Paulie. Paulie is my girlfriend's name for my penis.
"Now, youse got a team," said Rocco. "Who's on it?"
"My dad, my sister, my brother, my niece, and them two." I pointed to Simon and Ella.
Rocco looked everyone up and down and gave a satisfied nod.
"Good-lookin' team. Now, Paulie, you gotta lead 'em through the Maze. You gotta get them crystals, capisce?"
"Capisce."
"And if you don't get any, I have to break your legs."
I gulped. "I'll do my best."
"So listen up guys," says Rocco. "Youse are playin' sixteen games here today, so that means ya can win a max of sixteen crystals. Each crystal gets ya five seconds in the Crystal Dome. Hey, Paulie, how many seconds is that in total?"
"A hundred," I said confidently.
"Wrong."
"Eighty," said my sister.
"That's right," said Rocco.
Bugger. I was already off to a bad start. Good job I didn't have an important role or anything, like team captain.
We followed Rocco through a door and then ran down a corridor with The Crystal Maze theme music playing. I don't think running was strictly necessary, so it was probably to create a feeling of time pressure and excitement. Well, it worked because I was excited!
The Medieval Zone
We ran over stepping stones and entered a room decorated to look like a medieval castle. There were dark brick walls and flickering candles. Our first zone: the Medieval Zone.
As team captain, I had to decide who did each game.
"Okay Paulie, this first game's a mental," said Rocco. "So who's going to play this first game?"
"My brother Adam," I said. Adam's an archaeologist, so I knew he must be clever. He'd be good at a mental game.
The first game was a Crystal Maze classic: piecing together coloured glass to make a stained glass window. The window, when complete, corresponds to one of nine possibilities, behind which is the crystal.
"Okay Adam," I said. "You can do this."
Two minutes later and Adam had lost our first game.
"It was harder than it looked," said Adam.
Next, I nominated Simon to play a physical game involving rolling around inside a barrel.
Two minutes later, and Simon had lost our second game. This wasn't going so well.
"Okay, Paulie, who's up next?" said Rocco.
"Um..." I looked around my team. "My sister, Corryn."
"Well, I got two games for ya," said Rocco. "Skill or mental. So what's it going to be, Paulie: skill or mental?"
Shit: neither of those were my sister's strong points. In fact, I wasn't sure what my sister's strong points were.
"...Mental?" I said.
"Mental it is. Follow me, Corryn"
We followed Rocco to a room. Corryn entered the room. We all watched from the windows.
"Corryn, you have two minutes. Starting... now."
Inside the room was a giant chessboard. When I saw the chessboard, I already knew we were fucked.
A message on the wall said "Place six pieces on the board so no two pieces share the same row, column, or diagonal."
I had seen this puzzle before. And I could see the solution in my head.
"Corryn, put a piece on the corner of the board," I said. "Over there."
Corryn followed my instruction and put a giant chess piece on the corner of the board.
"Now put another piece on the other side... no, not there. Up. UP, I said. Towards the wall. No, not that wall, the other wall."
Then I realized I was wrong. I didn't know the solution after all.
Simon and Ella started shouting instructions. But by the time Corryn got five pieces on the board, the time was almost out.
"Get out!" everyone shouted.
Corryn got out of the room.
"Bad luck, kid," said Rocco. "You see, right here behind you on the table is the solution. It's been here the entire time."
Behind us was a dining room table with a chessboard. There were six pieces laid out in the correct positions.
Bugger.
"I saw that," said my brother. "But I didn't think it was important."
Fuck sake.
"Alright, team, three games down, zero crystals. But no worries, we still got one more game to play here before we move on. Paulie, who's up for a mystery game?"
Who was going to play a mystery game? No one on my team, that's for sure. Because there was only one thing to do now: take matters into my own hands.
"I'll do it," I said.
"Okay Paulie, follow me," said Rocco. He led me inside a room. On the walls were several portraits of men.
"To win the crystal, ya gotta identify which portrait is of Mumsie's son," said Rocco. "To make ya guess, knock on the correct paintin'. But be careful, 'cause ya only got one guess. Ya time starts... now."
I looked around the room. Clues were written on the wall. Clues like:
If you burn me at both ends, you'll be tired in the morning.
My mind was too panicked to read the other clues.
"Candles!" I said. "If you burned a candle at both ends, you'd be tired!" I ran to the candles and lifted them. One of the candles had a letter stamped on the bottom of it: the letter I.
"I found a letter!" I said.
With the help of my family shouting advice at me, I found two more letters: G and K.
"I have I, G, and K," I said.
"I'm pretty sure that's a C," said Simon.
"Paul, it's a C," said my brother.
"I, C, K," I said. "The answer's dick!"
"I don't think the answer's dick," said my brother.
But sure enough, there was a painting of a man with "Dick" underneath it.
But wait. There was also a painting with the word Rick under it. And a Mick. And I hadn't checked all the paintings, but there was probably also a Jick and a Bick.
With a minute left, I found a wax seal with the final letter: R.
R-I-C-K: the answer was Rick.
I knocked on the painting with "Rick" underneath it.
Nothing happened.
"Did I do it?" I asked.
"The crystal!" shouted my sister.
The box containing the crystal slid open. I grabbed the crystal. I did it! I won a crystal!
I got out of the room. Everyone clapped. This was great.
Rocco came over to take the crystal from me.
"Can I hold the crystal a bit longer?" I said to Rocco.
Finally, I relinquished the crystal to Rocco. He put it in his pocket.
"Okay, does anyone know where we're going next?" said Rocco.
I didn't know.
"We're going to the Industrial Zone!" said Rocco.
Rocco led us through a secret door behind a bookcase. The secret door was made only slightly less secret by the big sign marked FIRE EXIT. Then it was down some stairs, and we were in the Industrial Zone.
The Industrial Zone
The Industrial Zone was a chemical plant with metal barrels, warning signs, corrugated panels, and clouds of steam bursting out of pipes at random intervals.
"Okay, Paulie," said Rocco. "Who's up for a mental game?"
I nominated Ella because she hadn't played a game yet. Rocco led her into a room. The game involved around the room looking for clues and entering numbers into a giant safe. With the help of everyone giving her the answers, Ella won a crystal.
Then I nominated my dad for a skill game.
"No, I don't want to do it," he said. "One of you do it."
"Go on Dad, you can do it," I said.
"Yeah, you can do it, Dad," said my sister
So my Dad entered a room. There was a giant maze on a table.
"Oh no, it's this one," he moaned. "The one I didn't want to do."
My dad had to guide balls through the maze by tilting the table. I couldn't watch. It was too nerve-wracking.
But somehow he did it. He came out with a crystal in his hand. Everyone cheered.
"Next one's a mystery," said Rocco. "Who's gonna do it?"
"You do this one, Paul," said my sister.
So I volunteered for this game. I had already won one mystery game. Winning a second one would be easy.
I entered the room. There was a poker table. There was a dummy with a huge knife stuck in its blood-stained chest. There were a hundred lockers.
I started frantically searching the room for a clue.
"Look in the pockets!" shouted my sister.
There was a jacket draped over the chair. I found a set of keys inside the pocket. But which locker fits the keys?
I spent the next two minutes frantically searching the room for another clue. I got distracted for a minute trying to work out what the cards on the poker table meant. It turned out they didn't mean anything.
"Ten seconds," said Rocco.
"Get out!" everyone shouted.
Everyone knew that when you had ten seconds left on the Crystal Maze, it was time to get out. Because if the timer reached zero and you were still in the room, then you got locked in, and your team had to forfeit a crystal to get you back out.
I knew this, but in a last-second attempt to win the crystal, I shoved a key into a random locker. But when I turned the key, the key snapped in half. Whoops.
I got out of the room with five seconds to spare.
"Sorry, I broke a key," I said while holding up the broken key to Rocco. His face fell.
"Ah, don't worry about it," said Rocco.
Finally, my twelve-year-old niece played a mental game. She had to put the numbers one to eight in boxes so that no consecutive numbers touched each other. With our help, she won a crystal.
"Okay guys," said Rocco. "Eight games played and four crystals. Not too shabby. You're beginning to dust off your cobwebs. But now we gotta leave this zone and go to the next one. You guys don't mind crawling, right?" He lifted up a panel that revealed a disused air shaft.
Rocco made us crawl on our hands and knees through the air shaft. I noticed Rocco wasn't crawling like the rest of us: he had taken the stairs instead.
The Aztec Zone
We slid down a giant slide into the Aztec zone. My sister was last. We all had to wait for her at the bottom as she got into a hessian sack and slid down.
We were in an Aztec village. Speakers hidden in the trees played the sounds of various wild beasts and the odd parakeet. The walls were painted to look like pale yellow stone.
It was onto the games. My brother won a crystal by converting Aztec numbers into normal numbers. Simon won a crystal by throwing hoops onto sticks of bamboo. Ella won a crystal by clambering over an obstacle course and making giant eggs into stepping stones. Even my sister won a crystal, by putting giant dominoes together. We won every game.
Then it was onto the final zone: the Futuristic Zone.
The Futuristic Zone
On TV, the Futuristic Zone was a grimy and grungy space station, with cables and screens littered everywhere, like Red Dwarf. But now it was a clean, white corridor, worthy of an episode of Doctor Who.
I nominated my niece for a mental game. She had to play the game Simon, which required her to remember a colour pattern and then repeat it by pressing coloured buttons on the wall. I was good at this game, and I shouted instructions to my niece through the window: "YELLOW RED BLUE BLUE BLUE YELLOW BLUE!" I messed up once, by shouting red instead of yellow, but we still won a crystal.
Next I nominated myself for a skill game. Rocco opened the door, and I jumped inside.
"To win the crystal, ya gotta guide a ball to the end of the table into the basket," said Rocco. "Just one ball will do it."
So this was the future: rolling balls down a table.
There was a pile of balls next to me. There was a table in the shape of a zigzag. I could tilt the table forwards, backwards, and side to side.
I placed a ball on the table. I tilted the table forward. The ball started rolling forward. But then the ball fell off the table. I tried again, but the same thing happened.
"You can do it, Paul!" said my sister.
"I can't do this," I groaned. "This game isn't for me."
I tried tilting the table as high as possible to make the balls roll as fast as possible. If the balls rolled fast, they would get to the end of the table quicker. But it didn't work: the balls kept falling off. It didn't help that the table was shaped like a zig-zag. It was like playing Super Monkey Ball on the Gamecube. I never did have enough patience for Super Monkey Ball.
I tried using four balls at once, thinking that at least one ball would make it. But no: all four balls fell off the table.
"Take your time!" shouted my sister. "Do it slowly!"
I took my sister's advice: I did it slowly. I tilted the table gently so the ball rolled forward slowly. I found that like this, I could make small adjustments to guide the crystal along the zigzag. I could see the ball rolling down the table towards the basket.
"You're doing it!" said my sister.
I got the ball to the end of the table, made the ball do a right turn, and dropped the ball into the basket.
"OH YEAH!" I cried.
The box holding the crystal slid open. I grabbed the crystal and ran out of the room.
"Interestin' strategy ya got there, usin' four balls at once," commented Rocco. "I never seen anyone do that before."
My dad lost a mystery game where he had to answer science questions. One of the questions was, "How many legs does a scorpion have?" "Six!" I shouted out. But I was wrong. It turned out scorpions are like spiders because they have eight legs. Another question was "How many rings does Saturn have?" "One," I said, but that was the wrong answer too.
After the game, my niece said, "Saturn has seven rings."
"But why didn't you say that before?" I said.
"I did, but no one listened to me."
No one listened to her? That's not how The Crystal Maze works. You have to make people listen to you by SHOUTING at them. Even if your answers are wrong, like mine. That's the way The Crystal Maze works. BY SHOUTING AT EACH OTHER.
Ella won our last crystal by building mountains, lakes, and a volcano in a sandpit. "If I'd known there was a sandpit, I would have done that one," lamented my brother.
Then it was time for the final challenge: THE CRYSTAL DOME.
The Crystal Dome
The Crystal Dome was always the hardest part of The Crystal Maze. The contestants had to enter a giant crystal where fans were blowing gold and silver tokens around. For every gold token they collected, one point was added to their score. But for every silver token they collected, one point was subtracted from their score. So if you collected lots of silver tokens, you could get a ridiculous score like minus 76.
"We did things differently to the show," said Rocco. "There were no silver tokens. Only gold tokens."
Okay, never mind what I said about the silver tokens.
"Can we pick tokens up off the floor?" I asked Rocco.
"Well, ya could, but where's the fun in that?" said Rocco. "Ya came all this way to play the The Crystal Maze, right? Doncha think it would be more fun grabbin' the tokens outta the air?"
Fuck that. I'm picking the tokens up off the floor.
We had eleven crystals, which equated to 55 seconds in the Crystal Dome. The fans started blowing. The Crystal Maze theme music started playing. There was no whistle to tell us when to start, so I guessed we just started.
I grabbed a bunch of tokens from off the floor. They weren't actually tokens but scraps of gold foil of different shapes and sizes. I tried grabbing some out of the air, just for fun, but it was impossible because they were flying around too quickly. It was like trying to catch a Snitch in Quidditch.
My brother said he planned to stand stock-still with his hands open and wait for the tokens to come to him. He must have changed his mind because he ran around collecting tokens like the rest of us.
I've heard people say that the time in the Crystal Dome goes quickly, but for me, the 55 seconds seemed to last forever. Finally, the music ended. I stuffed my tokens through the letterbox just before a woman came to take the box away to count them.
As we left the dome, I bent down, picked up a scrap of foil from off the floor, and put it in my pocket to keep as a souvenir.
Rocco said, "Paulie."
Uh-oh.
"Paulie, get over here."
I went over to Rocco, anticipating a bollocking for stealing his precious tokens.
Rocco handed me a plastic card. "Give this to reception, and they'll show you your photos," he said, dropping his New York accent for the first and only time.
The important thing is that the scrap of foil was still safe in my pocket.
We gathered around at the bottom of the stairs in front of the Crystal Dome to hear our final result.
"Okay team, did you have a good time?" asked Rocco.
"Yeah!"
"Well, guys, we've weighed your tokens. And remember, there are no winners or losers here. Now, the average number of tokens is 136. But you guys? You got 197!"
Our team cheered.
"Ya got a respectable number of gold tokens, and I don't gotta break your legs," said Rocco.
And that was the end of The Crystal Maze Experience. We gathered our coats and belongings from the lockers. Simon and Ella were walking out, so I called after them: "Wait! Don't you want to look at the photos?"
"Nah, thanks," said Simon, and they left.
So the rest of us went to the gift shop to look at the photos. It wasn't not much of a gift shop. I was hoping they'd sell T-shirts so I could buy a Crystal Maze T-shirt for 1-year-old. It would be perfect because he's only a baby so he wouldn't be able to refuse to wear it.
But all the gift shop sold were postcards and tubes of Pringles.
We had a look at the photos.
The photos were mostly of Simon and Ella. One photo was of all of us but my head's cut off.
We didn't buy any photos.
The shop also sold crystals for £15. I already have too much crap in my house but I bought a crystal anyway. Because I earned it.
The first thing I did with my new crystal is put it in my mouth and show my niece. Then I got my brother to take a photo of me outside.
Well, I can finally say that, aged 36, I did it: I beat The Crystal Maze. And while we didn't win a pony-trekking holiday in Ullswater or a day of mud-plugging in Aberdeen, we did win the experience of a lifetime. The memories of racing through the zones, solving puzzles, and laughing with my family will stay with me forever.
By the way, I checked my pocket just now and the token's gone. I've already lost it.
Fuck sake.
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