Horcrux Hunt Escape Room Part 1: Overview & Menu

After Little Tomato's Harry Potter party this summer we had several friends 'subtly' mention that they would love to see the party decorations in person. Husband and I decided to plan an adult party around Halloween in the Harry Potter theme. As the party activities at Little Tomato's party were all very 'child oriented' we started brainstorming ways to make the party more adult. Being the giant puzzle nerds that we are, we settled on creating an Escape Room in the Harry Potter theme.

Horcrux Hunt Party

The overall party theme was a hunt for horcruxes. Harry Potter has a total of (7) horcruxes, counting Harry. Our party hunt was for the (6) horcruxes that weren't Harry. 

Our guest list was just under 30 guests, so we set up three separate 'locations' and hid (2) horcruxes in each location. This allowed us to split up the party into three manageable groups to not overwhelm any one area.

We also felt that it was important that each horcrux would be solved differently. If all six horcruxes were solved in the same formulaic method, the party would get dully repetitive. Each horcrux had its own theme and we tried to tie it to the story as much as possible.

The Horcruxes were a laminated picture of the horcrux, as it allowed more flexibility on where they could be hidden and we could have three copies for each of our three groups to collect. Horcrux design found HERE.

I will be following up with separate posts that breakout the Horcrux Hunt details per room. Once the posts are up, I will hyperlink the associated section in this post as well... stay tuned for the Escape Room details!

Diagon Alley

Diagon Alley hid the Hufflepuff Cup and Slytherin Locket.

Hufflepuff Cup Details

Slytherin Locket Details 

Diagon Alley contained a Dark Arts cabinet, a Gringotts cabinet, Wiseacres Wizarding Equipment shelves and Ollivander's Wand shop.

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry

Hogwarts hid the Ravenclaw Diadem and Tom Riddle's Diary.

Ravenclaw Diadem Details

Tom Riddle's Diary Details

Since this area was our dining room and living room, we made this the Great Hall and Gryffindor Common Room.

Hogsmeade & Forbidden Forest

Hogsmeade and the Forbidden Forest hid the Peverell Ring and Nagini.

Nagini Details

Peverell Ring Details

We made these locations in our basement. We set up a couple of Christmas trees and the play-stand scene that I made for Little Tomato several years ago. We used her toy table and cabinet as an Owl Post, set up the Honeydukes display I made for Little Tomato's party on a table, and turned our bar into the Three Broomsticks.

Food

I realized, after the fact, that I forgot to take photos of our food setup! We made little signs for everything with a themed name.

We had the following:

Herbology Bites : veggie tray

Veggie Pasties : various vegetarian filled pastries 

Pub Pies : mini quiches 

Hogs Head Cornish Balls : meatballs in sauce

Chinese Fire Balls : meatballs in sauce

Cauldron Cakes : mini lava brownie bites

Huffle Puffs : pastry puffs (vanilla filled)

... And the Honeydukes candy spread.

Drinks

We made all of our specialty drinks non-alcholic and set out liquor bottles to allow the guests to spike their drinks to their liking. For beer, we featured a local IPA from Lucky Bucket brewery, "Stupefy." Because... obviously.

Hot Apple Cider, served with 'Fire Whiskey.'

In a crockpot, add the following:

• 1 Gallon Apple Cider 
• 1-2 Oranges - squeeze fresh juice into cider and add a few shaved orange skins to the cider.
• Cinnamon Sticks
• Cloves 

Allow to heat for at least a couple of hours.

We've added mulling spices, star anise, etc. at various times, but we always use the ingredients above with rave reviews.

Butterbeer: 

We used the following recipe (SUPER simple) and everyone loved it. We went though a LOT.

• 2 liter of Cream Soda (we used A&W)
• 10 pumps Caramel syrup (Starbucks)
• 10 pumps Toffee Nut syrup (Starbucks)

We made a double batch and ended up adding a third batch at the end of the night.

Polyjuice Punch:

In a large punch bowl, we added the following:

• Cherry Lime Sherbet - I like to buy the 1.75 qt 'cardboard packaged' version because I can unwrap the sherbet and drop the whole block into the bowl vs having to scoop the whole contents out of a plastic container. We purchased the HyVee Cherry Lime. 
• Cherry limeade. We bought a 96 oz (3 qt) bottle @ Costco, and used about half of the bottle. 
• Ginger Ale, 2 liter bottle (entire contents).

We had a little fun with the names of the drink once you added liquor... I'm a giant pun nerd.