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 ten 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.

NEW FOR 2010!! One way doors! The latest design uses 10 one-way doors to make the mazes even more devilishly more fun and complicated! See these instructions for how to make one-way doors.

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.

Instructions:

Instructions for Panel Construction
1. The one-segment panel: construction diagram - plastic covering - picture
2. The two-segment panel: construction diagram - plastic covering - picture
3. The three-segment panel: construction diagram - plastic covering - picture
4. The rope-pathway post: construction diagram - picture
5. The one-way door: construction diagrams (door, frame, reverse view) - picture - additional instructions
Instructions for Maze Assembly

Maze Designs:

Once you have built the maze panels shown above, these are 5 different mazes you can construct with the panels (Hooray! 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, (sometimes) additional plastic, and (somtimes) additional poles.

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

Maze 2007: simple diagram - Original table diagram (made with cardboard sticks).

Maze 2008: simple diagram - original hand-drawn diagram

Maze 2009: simple diagram - original hand-drawn diagram

Maze 2010: simple 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.
Wonderful overhead view of the maze from a local tree.
View from the side of the completed maze, ready to frustrate friends and neighbors.

Our sign welcoming Charm City Cakes!
Our faithful maze assembly crew!
It always helps to have a good sign at the entrance.

Constructing the maze doors.
A stack of completed one-way doors, in storage.
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.	Wonderful overhead view of the maze from a local tree.	View from the side of the completed maze, ready to frustrate friends and neighbors.
Our sign welcoming Charm City Cakes!	Our faithful maze assembly crew!	It always helps to have a good sign at the entrance.
Constructing the maze doors.	A stack of completed one-way doors, in storage.	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.