Discussing corn mazes--did you ever visit one?

I've been to a few of them and have always found my way out. I can't imagine calling 911. It's corn, not a brick wall to go through!

My kids have done it a few times - it was in the drop off/pickup stage of life and please please don't actually hang out lol - there was a definite system in place so no calling 911. My recollection is that they had a family friendly easy one and one where things jumped out at you. I'm adding it to our fall plan now that we're empty nesters and don't have to worry about embarrassing anyone.

You can program a tractor to harvest it in a pattern, the very intricate ones are done that way.

You can just force your way through corn though if it's a family farm that doesn't use pesticides, the spiders are OUT OF CONTROL TERRIFYING (as I remember from being a kid playing Children of the Corn in the corn fields!)
Though if it's a huge maze, it's easy to get disoriented and not know which way to go.

All the ones I've seen have a tower and can guide people out. I don't like mazes as I have no natural sense of direction, so there not for me for sure! And corn fields are pretty creepy to me (again, see Children of the Corn and growing up in the 80s)

The big ones in my area do.  And some have an emergency exit.  They also have smaller mazes.

This is from the great Vermont corn maze in Danville Vermont:

The BIG Maze covers 24 acres and is approximately a 2+ hour hike. The miles of dirt trails are lined with 10' tall walls of corn. Throughout the BIG Maze are unique things from past mazes, 32' underground tunnel and 100' of bridges. An Emergency Exit trail also covers most of the maze giving you a chance to take a break, grab a snack or use the restrooms without having to start over from the beginning.

The maze in Danville also posts this on their site.  😆

We DO NOT Recommend the maze for 90% of teenagers!

Having helped thousands of people lose themselves over 2 decades, we can definitely say that the people who enjoy the maze the most are healthy ADULTS in their mid-twenty's to early 60's, as well as adults with young children (under 14 years old).

Unfortunately, 90% of teenagers 13 - 20 give up in less than 20 minutes
and have little interest in really solving the maze. All teens must have adult supervision at all times.
Radios and cell phones are not considered supervision.
The 10% of teenagers who like the challenge of the maze, return
every year and we enjoy seeing them year after year.

When my son was little, we would go to a large one just outside of town. The themes every year are great and pretty elaborate. This year's is the 75th peanuts anniversary.

Not a corn maze, but we played in the corn fields all the time next door to my cousins' house..

Corn can be planted really dense. Mazes are planted in straight rows, as a normal corn field, then in some, the planter goes across again at an angle, creating a super dense "wall".

Once the corn is up, they overlay the pattern they want onto a GPS map of the field. Then they mow down the paths of the maze. You can hook GPS up to about anything.

We 'map' our fields for GPS by putting a GPS receiver on a Gator and driving around the outside boundary. Then we drive around waterways or any other feature in the field that needs to be noted on a map. Then when we plant, fertilize, spray, harvest - that map is used. We can look at that map in layers for each process - right now the yield map layer is what is showing in our combines on the monitor - but we can click a button on the screen and look at planting rate, fertilizer, spray etc to see what is causing an issue in yields. .
You can even see where tracks are going from heavy equipment like a fertilizer spreader, that reduces the yields. Shows up clearly on the yield map.


Corn, even in rows, is no easy to walk through. I have the technique of holding my elbow up in the air with my forearm in front of my face to block the leaves from hitting me in the face. They can cut you up! And this is for corn planted in straight rows, no for a maze. Going across rows is awful. Corn puts out brace roots, so those create a dense clod at the base that's easy to trip on. The plants are not aligned going across, like the are going down a row.

I usually only go in far enough to take a potty break! That's why I like corn harvest better than bean harvest. Beans offer NO privacy! LOL

You hear every so often of someone getting lost in a corn field, usually a child. They weren't there for a maze, but just actually wandered off into a corn field and got lost. We have a few fields that have 1 mile long rows and parts of it are 1 mile wide.

I remember one child getting lost in a corn field and they had dozens and dozens of volunteers walk the entire cornfield just separated by a row or two looking for her. Now they generally call up the State Patrol, who has a heat camera to find them.

What I do hear almost every year now is some yahoo that is fleeing the cops and hides in a corn field. They could evade the law for a long time, until they get that plane up there - and bingo!

I've done a bunch because my kids love them. The give me "oh no I am going to get lost" anxiety but (obviously) we've always made it out.

We do one every year, but it's made for kids so it's not that difficult to find your way out!

Yep - used to take our kids. They loved them (except for the bugs - that was never a fun aspect...)

I did and felt very lost! We got out but I was a little unsure if we would. These days they have drones to search for stragglers. 

I've peed in my fair share, for sure. I grew up in Nebraska.