From Lindy Hop to The Crystal Maze - Go Team Boom! Warning: If your about to take part in the crystal maze experience DO NOT read this - embrace the surprises that await you! For most of the team, this was quite simply fulfilling a childhood dream (I didn’t intend for that to rhyme). As most of us know, the Crystal Maze was one of the best shows of all time back in the 90’s and waaaaay ahead of it’s time! In a decade of Gladiators, Takeshi’s Castle, Fort Boyard and other crazy shows, TV was never better (in my opinion). It was no surprise that that the indigogo crowdfunding campaign was a success. I believe the aim was to raise just over £250,000 but in the end, it was an overwhelming success with over 1 million raised. Clearly more people than anticipated wanted to take advantage of this once in a lifetime opportunity! All my team mates are swing dancers from Watford and London. Roughly 4 months ago one of the members posted some info on the crowdfunding campaign and I just went nuts! I took control, got a team of 8 together and we all made it happen. We came up with a team plan, strategy and ideas for team building. As a group of geeky/nerdy dancers (they know what I mean 😜) it was so easy getting on with all of them. For each team building thing/meeting at a bar etc; we all were in sync/like minded and had a unified approach to tackling the maze. Two members hosted a Crystal Maze TV marathon where we each watched the games and outlined our strengths and weaknesses (being swing dancers we all said physical would be fine!) In the end, we all had chosen which games we would like to do (physical, skill, mental and mystery) and which zones were their favourite (industrial, future, aztec and medieval). The work we all did proved to be essential as on the day itself; I made quick decisions as team captain on the order of play which enabled us to do more games and *spoiler alert* the games themselves were remarkably similar to watch we watched on the TV show. Even our guide said she was impressed by the snap decisions. (I hope the team doesn’t mind me using our actual names). So the day itself; it started off with a wonderful and enthusiastic guide who loved that we were all swing dancers (at the end a few of us even did a celebration dance). Aztec Zone - As expected, it was completely covered in sand (there is still sand in my trainers). It was a tough start as we didn’t win a crystal in our first 3 games, but our team spirit always remained high - most notably during Leonie’s physical game as she gave it literally everything she had. I can’t say too much about the games we had but I will say there were some amazing acrobatics involved as she had to run/climb from one side of the room to the other. I’m not sure why but I felt quite confident and decided to do the last game and pick skill. I was given an interesting game which I can only describe as basketball on all fours. With a bit of luck I managed to complete it successfully, took ages to find where the crystal was and got out with seconds to spare; words cannot describe how thrilled I was when I got out - I high fives and hugged everyone as I felt like I just achieved a life long dream of winning a crystal in the maze…anything else that happened now was a bonus! This was the feeling I dreamed about since buying my ticket! We all prayed to an Aztec God thing thanking it for our first crystal before heading off to our next zone. Industrial zone - admittedly we had all hoped the Ocean zone would feature as its more interesting but due to health and safety reasons being surrounded by water was probably not a a good idea. We were thrilled with our first crystal but industrial was a struggle for all that took part. Glenn had a tough game with a remote control car but still came very close. John had a game very similar to our secret escape experience…but this time he had less than an hour and was on his own. Gordon had the toughest game of all in this zone and came very close to getting locked in. It involved a lot of quiet climbing as bells were attached on many ropes. Our guide was quite kind when Gordon rang the bell three times. If we didn’t have such great cockney impressions he might be been sent to the lock in room! Future zone - so 1 crystal out of 8 games wasn’t the best of starts. However, we remained positive and were overwhelmed by the awesomeness that was the future zone. I said from the start of our team building sessions that as long as I get a game in the future zone I’m happy. But it was Leonie’s turn first so I mentally prepared myself whilst John and Glenn gave Leonie excellent instructions in her next game where she couldn’t touch the maze lines. It was a tense 3 minutes but it was an awesome team effort that led to our second crystal. I was determined to get some momentum going so no matter what the game was, I was going to give it 100 percent. I couldn’t believe my luck though as earlier in the morning I had watched a Big Bang episode where the characters were dodging green lasers to get to pizza on the other side - this was exactly what I had to do to get the crystal. If I hit the lasers 3 times I was locked in. It was a tense situation, my team were apparently making mission impossible sounds but I was so focused I didn’t realise this until John told me the day after! My swing dance solo work totally came in handy for this as my balance was pretty good when I needed it most! I only hit the lasers once and made it back in time! 2 crystals out of 2 for me and 3 in total - I was so flipping happy! Gordon and Glenn then kept the momentum going each winning crystals! Now we had 5 in total after 3 zones! A respectful number already! Medieval zone - a zone Florence and Mel wanted to do games in from day 1 of team building! So they did and were very successful! All of a sudden we had won 6 games in a row and had 7 in total. Leonie and John also had tough games but did brilliantly to bring our total to 9 crystals (Leonie had now won 2/3 of her brutal physical challenges, well done you trooper!) Thanks to our amazing run at the end…everyone had won at least one crystal, this could not of worked out any better! The crystal dome - sadly one of our team members had a train delay and their phone died so he was not able to join us for the games. However, he waited for us at the crystal dome room and I nicely asked our guide if he could join us in the dome - we were all thrilled he could! With 9 crystals all 8 of us finally together we had 45 seconds in the crystal dome. What was shocking was that the 3 other teams who took part during our time slot did even better - 9/16 crystals is way above average but these three teams were all on fire! In the end we got 180 gold tokens (for fans of the show there were no silver tokens, just as many gold as possible in the time you have). We were the last team inside and noticed so many people were crowing around the letter box so we designated our two smallest team members (Leonie and Gordon) at the front to put the golden tickets inside whilst John/Mel/me gave tokens to Gordon and Glenn/Florence/Michael gave tokens to Leonie. We did great!…not as well as the other three teams but I was so proud of everyone! We did it in our way, worked so well together and all left with memories to last a lifetime. It was one of the best shows in the 90s and we all fulfilled a dream of being part of this wonderful event!
