Featuring 26 rooms of jail-themed challenges…

If you’ve ever caught yourself screaming unsolicited advice to the stars of Fox’s Prison Break, if you ever fancied the idea of flexing your mind and muscle against a real-world version of The Crystal Maze, there’s a brand new Abu Dhabi attraction that is right up your cell block.

Prison Island – Beat the Bars, has now sprung open its iron gates in Abu Dhabi mall and is issuing an open challenge to the UAE’s adventure and excitement seekers.

Brig-ging rights

An hour’s stretch of hard time is available at Dhs125 for adults and Dhs105 for kids per hour. And the estimated completion window for the whole experience is between one and three hours (though you don’t have to finish all the challenges if you don’t want to).

Set over a 1,000m² expanse, this is no escape room — it’s a network of 26 individual ‘cells’, decorated with a warden’s eye level of detail and featuring tasks each more fiendishly tricky than the last, and you’ll have to beat them all if you want to escape the island, with winner’s bragging rights.

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Cell reception

You and your team of up to six players will need to be strong of body and mind as you go up against cells such as Cliffhanger, where much like the movie of the same name, contestants will have to scramble across a series of obstacles without touching the floor. Or how about the ominously-titled Devil’s Island? Where you’ll need to go full Mission Impossible to snake your way through the illuminated latticework of a tightly-lit laser grid.

The cell, Flash Dance requires inmates to leap between specific squares or else face certain disappointment from fellow team members. And Gates, requires an elite level of skill, patience, a steady hand and literally nobody standing behind you telling you to ‘hurry up’ as you guide a ball through a collection of entryways.

Think you’ve got what it takes to beat the bars? Does all of this sounds simple? We’d like to remind you that ‘red light green light’ seemed like an absolute cakewalk before we saw it in Squid Game. There’s only one way to see for yourself, and remember — there is a leader board.

Abu Dhabi Mall, Al Zahiya, Dhs125, @prisonisland.abudhabi.

Images: Provided