box maze 2012

Since Halloween fell on a Wednesday this year, Terry decided he'd like to try to make a box maze for the Awana and youth group students at church. Sort of an outreach night. So all of September and part of October, Terry collected large refrigerator, stove, freezer boxes, etc. from places like Lowe's and broke them down to store. Then he had people volunteer to help him make the maze, hoping for School of Mines students, who are mostly engineering majors. You can see why he'd want their help!

So the Sunday before Halloween, Terry had a group of guys help him begin on the maze. They removed half of the 550-seat sanctuary chairs and got started. They didn't have a plan, but made it up as they went, which worked well for them. They lined up boxes, drilled holes through them, used zip ties to hold boxes together and then taped the seams, inside and out, to seal out light and protect the students from any protruding pieces of cardboard.

Here is what the maze looked like at the beginning of construction on Sunday afternoon. Terry stayed that night until after 11pm and got quite a lot done. He stayed that late pretty much every day that week.

I think this was Monday or Tuesday. Probably Tuesday. The maze it almost complete except for the exits, which they are working on. The tall boxes are a part of a bridge over some reinforced chairs which led to one exit. Another exit went under the bridge in triangle shape.

And here's the completed maze! It was completely black inside after they got done duct taping all the small holes up. Terry's plan was for the middle and high school students to find their way through with no light source at all. He even took away their cell phones. To make it even harder, they were only allowed to use one exit - the other was blocked up. Only one or two students found their way through. That made Terry happy.

But the Awana kids were given glow sticks to help them. They had a wonderful time and no trouble at all finding their way out of both exits, going through again and again. There's Ninja Turtle Noah! He had been at the church every day while the maze was being built so he was an old pro at getting through. 

A great time was had by all. But talk about exhausting.

And here is the video Terry made: