Paul, Bob, Ken and Bob's Modular Maze Panels

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Paul, Bob, Ken and Bob's Modular Maze Panels

Hi everybody! These pages document a design for modular maze panels. The panels are easy to construct, sturdy, relatively inexpensive, and give rise to a lot of fun and interesting maze designs. Best of all, they allow you to construct full sized mazes to walk around in. We've been using our panels for over six years now (we put them up every year, for our Halloween party), and everything about them works really well.

Building the panels takes about 2 days and $1000. Once the panels are built, they can be used over and over to create a wide variety of different mazes.

Assembling a maze takes about 4 hours with a team of 3, depending on how many fancy options (rope lights, prizes, rope pathways, curtains, etc.) you decide to install. Taking down the maze can be done in just over an hour. We store our maze panels in the attic of the garage (yes, my garage has an attic).

If you build your set of modular maze panels, please contact me. I'll drive over with my set of panels and we can put them together to make a double-sized mazes (I live in Maryland, in the United States). Eventually I hope to have festivals where dozens of us can combine all of our panels to make enormously large mazes which stretch over acres and acres of land.

Design Drawings:

These are the engineering drawings which show how to construct the maze panels. The drawings are complete and show all the details. However, for additional information (instructions, bill of materials, construction time and cost, etc.) click here for detailed instructions on building maze panels.

The one-segment panel: construction diagram - plastic covering - picture
The two-segment panel: construction diagram - plastic covering - picture
The three-segment panel: construction diagram - plastic covering - picture

Maze Designs:

Once you have built the maze panels shown above, these are 5 different mazes you can construct with the panels ([NEW]: Horray! The design for 2002 has shown up - thank you Arden!). Each design requires 43 3-segment panels, 38 2-segment panels, and 14 1-segment panels, plus rope, stakes, and (sometimes) additional plastic.

Click here for detailed instructions on assembling maze panels into complete mazes.

Maze 2001: simple diagram - fun, 3D diagram - original hand-drawn diagram

Maze 2002: simple diagram - fun, 3D diagram - original hand-drawn diagram

Maze 2003: simple diagram - fun, 3D diagram - original hand-drawn diagram

Maze 2004: simple diagram - fun, 3D diagram - original hand-drawn diagram

Maze 2005: simple diagram - fun, 3D diagram - original hand-drawn diagram

Maze 2006: simple diagram - fun, 3D diagram - original hand-drawn diagram

Pictures

Click on any image below to see it full-size.

A view down a long corridor deep inside one of the mazes. Notice the stabilizing ropes across the top.
View from the side of the completed maze, ready to frustrate friends and neighbors.
View from above (the best I could do leaning out from the balcony of a room on the 2nd floor).

Maze panels stacked up in the garage, waiting to be assembled.
More panels!
Moving panels out of the garage goes much faster with two people.

When starting the assembly, stake a twine square onto the ground to help determine where to put the panels. Use measured diagonals to make sure the square outline is truly square.
Panels are connected together with plastic cable ties.
Connecting panels with cable ties is fast and easy.

Starting assembly of the maze panels into a completed maze.
The maze is half complete.
Inside the maze the corridors encourage you to get lost. The corridors inside are fairly roomy (2 feet four inches wide).

This particular design had a rope pathway outside the perimiter of the maze. So stabilization ropes (which hold panels securely in place) had to be run over the top of the pathway.
Completed maze, showing the rope pathway around the outside.
Watch out for cable ties which stick out. You don't want to poke someone in the eye!

Make sure cable ties lay flat so they don't poke the pedestrians.
Cable ties are easily and quickly removed with a pair of wire cutters.
When taking down the maze, just leave the panels in place, then pick them up later.

Thumbnails created by Pics Handler.

A view down a long corridor deep inside one of the mazes. Notice the stabilizing ropes across the top.	View from the side of the completed maze, ready to frustrate friends and neighbors.	View from above (the best I could do leaning out from the balcony of a room on the 2nd floor).
Maze panels stacked up in the garage, waiting to be assembled.	More panels!	Moving panels out of the garage goes much faster with two people.
When starting the assembly, stake a twine square onto the ground to help determine where to put the panels. Use measured diagonals to make sure the square outline is truly square.	Panels are connected together with plastic cable ties.	Connecting panels with cable ties is fast and easy.
Starting assembly of the maze panels into a completed maze.	The maze is half complete.	Inside the maze the corridors encourage you to get lost. The corridors inside are fairly roomy (2 feet four inches wide).
This particular design had a rope pathway outside the perimiter of the maze. So stabilization ropes (which hold panels securely in place) had to be run over the top of the pathway.	Completed maze, showing the rope pathway around the outside.	Watch out for cable ties which stick out. You don't want to poke someone in the eye!
Make sure cable ties lay flat so they don't poke the pedestrians.	Cable ties are easily and quickly removed with a pair of wire cutters.	When taking down the maze, just leave the panels in place, then pick them up later.