Squid Game the Experience is a fun, immersive experience based on the hit Netflix show. It’s a fun few hours, but for me it didn’t quite meet my expectations. Here’s my Squid Game the Experience review.
Squid Game the Experience is an attraction based on the famous Netflix TV show. You can find Squid Game the Experience in lots of cities around the world. I went to the one in London, so my Squid Game the Experience review will focus on the London experience at the Excel Centre in East London.
I had mixed thoughts on Squid Game the Experience in London. In some ways, it was a fun thing to do. There were good props, and actors in costume. The games were fun (ish), and there was a chance to take some nice photos. So that was all good.
However, there were a lot of elements of Squid Game the Experience that I wasn’t sure about. I was inside for about 2 hours, and calculated that I spent maybe 6 minutes of that playing the actual games. There were just too many people, too much queueing and too much waiting around. The hosts were underwhelming, and the scoring system was completely arbitrary so there was no element of competition. It was a shame, because the experience could have easily been so much more fun.
In my Squid Game the Experience review, I’ll go into detail about the whole experience. I’m still glad I did it, and I did have fun at times. But it was still a bit underwhelming overall.
Arriving at Squid Game the Experience
Squid Game the Experience in London is at the Excel Centre in East London. It was easy to get to, with the new Elizabeth line going to Custom House tube station. From here, it was an easy and well-signposted walk. The walk along the waterfront was especially nice, and it was nice to spend some time by the water and enjoying the views.
The outside of Squid Game the Experience is also a great place to take some photos. You can take photos of the huge signs before you go in.
My booked time slot was 1.30pm. The instructions said to arrive 15 minutes early, and we were allowed in at 1.15pm for the 1.30pm.
Inside the building
Once you get inside, you’ll need to leave bags inside the lockers. The lockers are fairly small, so don’t bring anything more than a shoulder bag or a small day backpack. You also need to pay extra for the lockers – it’s £2 for 2 hours hire, and you can do it all through the QR code on the locker. There are also toilets inside. And when you get your tickets scanned, you get given a wristband with a chip – you’ll scan this chip on the wristbands throughout the games.
The entrance area of Squid Game the Experience also has lots more photo opportunities. It was good fun to take photos with some of the models and props from the Netflix show, including the scary doll and the men in pink suits and masks.
We got in the queue to enter the main experience about 1.30pm. However, this is where the experience started going downhill. The queue was already long when we joined, and it didn’t move for ages. After a while, a group of people ahead were let through, but they stopped the queue before we got there. So then we had to wait again. After getting in the queue around 1.30pm, we finally got through about 2pm. It was a long time just stood in a queue, and meant that we entered the experience already a bit fed up.
Step One: Getting your number and meeting the team
Once we got to the front of the queue, we got given a numbered bib. You couldn’t choose your number, but that was ok. The bibs were a bit simple and mostly plain white, but at least it was something to help us feel like we were part of ‘Squid Game’. Then you scan your wristband and a machine takes a photo of you, which is used on the scoreboard throughout the games. The photo machine wasn’t very clear to use, so most people ended up with a weird photo that cut off a lot of their head. But that didn’t really matter.
About 50 people were let through at a time. So it was a bit chaotic jostling with 50 other people to get the bibs and take the photo on the machines.
Then the ‘leader’ introduced themselves. Each group has a leader. Unfortunately, the leaders aren’t really dressed in a Squid Game costume – they’re just wearing clothes that have a bit of pink and black. They have a microphone headset, so they can talk to the group. And while some of them might try to play a bit of a character, they don’t really act as characters from Squid Game. It felt like they were purely there for crowd control, to explain instructions and shuffle the group through the rooms at the right time. It would have been so much better if these group leaders had had good costumes and played more of a character.
The first room
The first room you get taken through to is the bedroom. It looks like the bedroom in Squid Game with bunk beds.
You can take photos in here, and there’s an an actor dressed in the pink suit/mask there – although he didn’t move the whole time, but we could still take photos with him.
Then the business man with a briefcase comes through – dressed like the man who recruits people to Squid Game in the Netflix show. He speaks to the group briefly, explaining the rules of the game.
The 50-ish players are then split into the red and blue team. There’s about 25 people in each team, and I think they organise it so the person/people you’re booked with will be in the same team. Then you get taken through to the first game – the red team goes one way, and the blue team goes the other way. I was in the blue team.
Game One: Memory Squares
The first game we played was Memory Squares. It’s like the game in Season 1 of Squid Game, where there’s the glass bridge. Some of the squares of glass are safe, and others aren’t – meaning the players in the TV show fall through the glass to their deaths.
Fortunately, the Memory Squares game in Squid Game the Experience didn’t involve anyone falling through a bridge to their death. Instead, you lined up behind the row of squares. Then, for about 2 seconds, the squares light up red and green. You have to quickly memorise the pattern of green squares – these are the safe squares to stand on. Everyone gets a turn, and the pattern is different for everyone.
It’s quite fun, and most people managed to get to the other side by only standing on the green squares. However, the whole game took about 5-10 seconds for each player. So you weren’t playing the game for long. The rest of the time was watching/waiting for others to take their turn.
The arbitrary scoring system
Once you got across the ‘bridge’, you could scan your wristband based on how far you got. If you got to the end, you scanned on one shape. And if you didn’t, you scanned a different shape. And if you got halfway, you scanned the third shape.
However, this is where the scoring system in Squid Game the Experience quickly fell apart. After scanning our wristbands, we could see the order of people on the screen – who was first place and who was last. But we couldn’t work out how that was calculated. There were only three options for scores – whether you got across the bridge, got halfway, or didn’t cross. But somehow this was turned into an actual score. Was the score based on speed? If so, that wasn’t explained, and also couldn’t be true because we scanned the wristband in a random order after completing the bridge. No one could understand how the scoring system worked. So being in ‘first’ place or ‘last’ place lost all significance – there wasn’t any reason to play the games competitively if they weren’t scored properly.
The leaders had said we couldn’t take photos of the games, but most people were sneaking a few photos and no one said anything.
Game Two: Marbles (plus a bit of Ddakji)
The second game, once we had all shuffled through to the next room, was marbles. In this game, there were four people around a table. You got given 10 marbles each. And you had to throw your marble into the middle, trying to get it within the shape in the middle of the table. The person who gets their marble into the middle takes all the marbles and wins. If you run out of marbles, you lose.
The game lasted about 4 minutes. It wasn’t the most energetic of games, but it was ok enough. The trick was to throw the marble hard enough so it bounces off the other side and rolls back into the shape in the middle. But it was surprisingly hard to do.
At the end of the game, we all had to scan our wristband gain. And again the scoring system was weird. Either you scored high (if you had lots of marbles), middle (if you had a few marbles left), or low (if you had 0 marbles left). And then the players were ranked again, in a random order – there was no logic. One person on our table had been in 1st place after the first game, and then scored highly in the marbles game as they had won a lot. But somehow they were now down to 6th place.
Ddakji game
Then we had an additional game of Ddakji – the first game in Squid Game with the coloured envelopes. You throw one envelope on top of the other, trying to make the envelope on the floor flip over. But the leader chose two people to play, and then another two people – so we didn’t all get a chance to play. I think this game was just time filler until we could go through to the next room.
Game Three: Tug of War
The tug of war game in Squid Game the Experience was unfortunately the biggest let down of the games. Instead of a rope between two teams, there was a vertical rope on a pulley system. You had to pull the rope to make the flag on the ceiling move.
However, there was a timer on the wall. And each player literally had 5 seconds of pulling the rope before they had to move, and the next player could pull the rope. So in this game, each person was actively playing the game for 5 seconds. And the rest of the time was just spent watching other people, and watching the little red flag move very slowly across the ceiling.
Apparently, this game was a competition between the red and the blue team. And our blue team apparently ‘lost’ against the red team. We couldn’t see what the red team was doing so I have no idea if this was true or not. We were told to scan our wristband on the ‘loser’ shape to get the ‘loser’ score. But then everyone started scanning their wristband on the ‘winner’ shape – encouraged by the leader. It again just made the scoring system even more stupid, when the blue team leader was actively encouraging the team to cheat the scores.
Merging the blue and red teams
Then things got a bit (or even more) chaotic. Blue team leader started to take us into the red team’s room, but then turned around and red team came into our room. There were 50 players just wandering around, getting in everyone’s way.
Then our blue team leader said something about needing to take their lunch break, so the red and blue teams joined together. I have no idea if it was part of the game for the red and blue teams to join together at this point, or if it just happened to our group because someone needed their lunch break. It was really unprofessional for the leader to announce to everyone that they were going on their lunch break – surely they could have made it seem like this was meant to happen. And I’m not sure why it was muddled and confusing about where the players were meant to go next. Squid Game the Experience has literally hundreds of people doing this everyday, so surely they should know which order of rooms the players should be taken into next.
Game Four: Red Light, Green Light
The next game was ‘Red Light, Green Light’. It’s probably the most famous game from the Squid Game TV series, and was probably the best game in Squid Game the Experience.
It would have been an even better game, if it had been organised better. Now the red and blue teams had joined together, there were about 50 people in the room. So when we all lined up at the start line, it was very crowded. So you couldn’t get past people to run forward – you just had to go at their speed. And you only had about 1-2 seconds of ‘green light’ each time – enough for one or two steps. So you couldn’t move far forward.
The scoring system for this game was based on the leader spotting people moving. So it definitely wasn’t very accurate. A lot of people were cheating and running forward when her back was turned. She was mostly focussed on the kids, and ignored most of the adult players. There was a group of overly competitive, bratty 12 year olds who slightly ruined the game.
The whole game only lasted about 30 seconds. So most people didn’t get to the finish line. The actual game was fairly fun, it just would have been a lot better with fewer players in the room and longer to play the game.
Again, the random final scoring system was used, and who knows how they came up with the ranking of players on the screens.
Game Five: Musical Chairs
We all moved into the next room for the final game. This game was like musical chairs, but involved shapes on the floor. There were shapes around the outside of the circle, and then other rows further in the circle with fewer shapes. In the game, you had to walk around the circle. When the music stopped, you had to stand on the symbol that’s shown on the screen. So it the screen shows a circle, you have to stand on the circle.
There weren’t many circles on the floor. So about 80% of people were out in the first round. So all these players had about 10 seconds of playing the game. The overly competitive, bratty 12 year old kids dominated this game. And obviously none of the adults really tried to fight these kids for a space on the shape. So one of these kids ‘won’ this game. If there was a dispute over who stood on the space first, the leader basically chose the winner. She said she was thinking of a number between 1-10, and whoever guessed closest won. So she basically chose who won.
Choosing the winner
The game again got confusing with how the overall winner was chosen. There were three possible winners. One was the child who had won the Musical Chairs game. Another was the man who was in 1st place on the random scoring system. And a 3rd guy was also in the mix. Apparently he hadn’t had any scores registered because his smart watch had interfered with the chip on his wristband. So for some reason, this meant he could be a finalist. Which again seemed very random and unfair, but anyway.
The ‘leader’ from Squid Game then entered the room. The actor was in the black costume and black mask. that was good to have a proper Squid Game character enter the room. He explained that the games were at an end, and the winner would be decided through a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.
That felt like a bit of a let-down way to choose the overall winner. It’s just a game based on luck, and it wasn’t that interesting for the other 47 people to stand around and watch. One of the adult men ended up winning.
The winner could choose whether to have a big prize himself, or he could choose for everyone to get a small prize. He chose the big prize for himself. So we didn’t get anything. Then it was time to shuffle with the crowd to leave.
Korean Night Market
After all the games, we spend a bit of time looking around the stalls in the foyer area. It was advertised as a ‘Korean Night Market’. And it sort of was. There were some stalls selling food and snacks, and some merchandise you could buy. The drinks and snacks were very expensive, but it was nice to sit down after nearly 2 hours standing around.
We had a drink, took some final photos, and then it was time to leave.
Final Thoughts
My Squid Game the Experience review isn’t the most positive. But I did have an ok time. It was good to have photo opportunities with iconic figures and sets from the film. And some parts were fun. It was cool to feel like you were in Squid Game, and some of the games were fun.
However, there were just too many people. 25-50 people in each game was too many. And there was nowhere near enough time playing the actual games. The whole experience took about 2 hours in total, but each player will play the games for 7 or 8 minutes (and that’s being generous). The rest of the time is spent queuing at the start, listening to game instructions, waiting for your turn in the game.
The scoring system was completely arbitrary, which meant that there wasn’t any incentive to try to ‘win’ at any games. So that took away something that could have made it more fun. In the Squid Game TV show, the players get eliminated – killed – if they lose the game. But in Squid Game the Experience, it doesn’t matter at all if you win or lose anything because there’s no real scoring system.
Obviously it’s nice to not be in fear of being shot if you lose a game, but a bit of competition and desire to win would have been nice. The experience was also slightly ruined by the bratty kids taking the ‘fairness’ element of games too seriously and having a go at adult strangers if they thought they were cheating. I wasn’t expecting there to be so many children as players, given the violence and adult nature of the TV show.
All of the games were very simple, and could easily have been more high-tech which would have made them more engaging. For example, you could have actual motion sensors in Red Light Green Light, or more costumed actors, and maybe they could get you with water pistols when you get ‘eliminated’. There’s so much more potential that they could have done. The team leaders also weren’t great. They weren’t really in character and not in costume, and were just there as crowd control. Again, there was so much more potential there for them to have created an amazing atmosphere in the games.
Overall, I’m still glad I did Squid Game the Experience in London. There were fun moments, and I’ve got some good photos to remember it. But I wouldn’t choose to do it again. There was just too much waiting around in a crowd of people for very little time spend playing the games.
Hope you enjoyed my Squid Game the Experience review! If you’re looking for more fun things to do in London or the UK, check out my theatre reviews of shows in London’s iconic West End. Or, if you’re staying in London, you could take some day trips to nearby Oxford, Stratford-Upon-Avon, Longleat or Stonehenge.
