The O2, Crystal Maze & Backstreet Boys
Sunday 6th November 2022
What started off as an early afternoon booking for the Crystal Maze experience in London morphed into a very long busy day in London!
A couple of days before going Vikki decided to book the Up At the O2 climb experience voucher which needed to be used. Timing wise to be able to do the O2 climb and make it across London to the Crystal Maze in time we had to book the first climb of the day, meaning we needed to be there at 9.30. As it was a Sunday there weren’t any trains early enough so the day started with a 6.15am alarm!
At least at that time on a Sunday morning the traffic was light and the journey was problem free. A quick stop for breakfast and coffee en route (where Vikki got the most spectacular spelling of her name yet!) and we arrived and parked up at the O2 with plenty of time to spare.
What better weather for climbing up to the 52m high summit of the O2 than torrential rain? The weather was absolutely awful on the way and when we arrived. We headed off to work out where we needed to go and while running through the rain puddling dodging Steve did a bit of a puddle dance which resulted in him not quite slipping over but ending up with drenched feet and very wet jeans!
A coffee at Costa warmed us up and the hand dryer in the toilets helped dry off Steves socks and shoes before we headed back out. We were offered the option to move to a later slot or rebook for another day but decided to go ahead with the climb anyway.
Several people book in chose to swap so the group doing the climb was much smaller than it should have been. They dug out the pre-covid waterproof suits for us so at least we didn’t get completely soaked. We learnt some interesting facts about the O2 while we were waiting…
- The diameter is 365m to represent the days of the year
- There are 12 steel masts to represent the months of the year
- The summit is 52m high to represent the weeks of the year
We got kitted up (the suit may have been a little large for Vikki!) and set off. We were the first two up, which was good because the others were a little slow. The rain did ease off quite a bit so it wasn’t quite as wet as expected. We got to the top and the view wasn’t perhaps at it’s finest!
While up there we spotted the cable car and decided that seeing as neither of us had ever been on it we would use that as part of our travel across London to the Crystal Maze. After a wet 15mins ‘admiring’ the view, we made a rather slippy decent, declined the outrageously expensive green screen souvenir photo and went looking for some lunch.
While grabbing a quick lunch at Five Guys in the O2, Vikki decided to browse what events were coming up and discovered the Backstreet Boys were on stage that evening so much to Steve’s disgust tickets were purchased and the day just got a whole lot longer!
After lunch we went on the cable car (or the snog box as Steve named it!), then the underground into central London, basically going via the O2!
A quick wander from the station and we got to the Crystal Maze. The games were really fun, it was very authentic to the original show, although the host being a cross dressing woman was a bit of a surprise. Vikki was the team captain and was too nice giving the other team members the challenges they wanted which resulted in her being the only person in the team to not win a single crystal. Steve failed miserably at his first, archery related, task but absolutely nailed his second one.
With plenty of time to spare before having to be back at the O2 we made the most of the now very much cleared up weather with a walk around London, seeing the sights including Trafalgar Square, Big Ben, Parliament, The London Eye and probably others I’ve forgotten!
Dinner at a Greek restaurant on the Southbank (with the most peculiar pudding ever) and we headed back to the O2. Quick stop in the car to charge phones and get changed out of wet clothes, especially socks. Entertaining watching Steve change his socks behind the wheel of the blue car only to then discover he’d put a wet one back one!
Once in the stadium it seemed small compared to Wembley but it was still impressive and the atmosphere was great – definitely more women than men in the audience though!
The music was good, Vikki had a bit of a sing and dance but it’s amazing how many songs that had we’d never heard of…turned out afterwards they had been promoting a new album when covid hit and so they picked the tour back up again and that’s why we didn’t know most of the songs!!
