The Killing Game

Hey Earth bugs,

For my mum's birthday last September I got her an experience gift to go and be part of a murder mystery dinner where there's actors playing out various scenes and whatnot. My mum has always loved murder mystery books and I figured it would be a different sort of present to usual, but as the day got closer we were both nervous. We didn't know what to expect and I was incredibly worried that she was actually going to hate it. But on the 17th February we hopped in the car and off we went to Aspley Guise. 

We stopped at a McDonald's on the way...kind of obligatory on a long journey. It wasn't until I got into the car that I realised I was meant to get my own ketchup and hadn't, so had my nuggets ketchupless. My heart broke a little bit, but I had chocolate raisins for the rest of the journey to keep me entertained. It didn't take that long to get to the hotel and much to our relief it wasn't many turns off the motorway so it didn't seem difficult to get to. After checking in and dropping our bags off we went for a walk around the village, there were lots of beautiful houses but not much of anything else so we headed back to get ready. 

The waiting game happened before the killing game as we were becoming more nervous as we sat waiting to go down to the restaurant, we weren't the first to arrive so waited until it was time to be called in. There was a seating plan to follow and I think we were quite lucky with who was on our table as everyone seemed nice and we all spoke easily throughout the evening, about what was happening and just life in general. 

Now, the Killing Game was incredible. It was amazing how they all stayed in character throughout the entire evening, they often performed "scenes" which would be intended to be private conversations that the guests would overhear that fit in with the plot and we had to make notes and see who had a reason to dislike who and all the juicy plot twists. The guests could also ask the actors questions as well, you could get as involved as you liked so if you wanted to just work it out without asking too many questions yourself and just listening to others then that was also completely okay. I liked this as I'm not usually one to put myself out there, but even me and my mum felt comfortable asking questions. It was quite important to make note of as much as you could because no one got murdered until after dessert so you didn't know what information you would need and what was completely irrelevant. 

There was an opportunity at the end of the live performance to line the characters up and ask further questions to help guess whodunit...we got it wrong. But there was logic behind our answer so I like to think we were right. The food was nice as well which is always a bonus, oh and you got a free pen.

We both enjoyed the evening so much and I'm pretty happy with how it turned out! If you are looking at getting someone a gift a bit different than usual then I definitely recommend checking out experience gifts, there's so many to choose from and you're bound to find something...even for the fussiest of people. 

Happy Birthday treat weekend, Mumma G!

Until next week,

Lia x