A Fun Time At Preston Farms Corn Maze

This year I went with Keri to Preston Farms Corn Maze 2014. It is located at 92 Route 2 in Preston. This year’s theme was The Wild West. I didn’t want to give any surprises away before the end of the season so I purposefully waited to write my article about it.
It was our first time in a corn maze. We were greeted by a friendly young man who was dressed up like a U.S. Marshal who showed us an aerial view of the maze which has a man on a horse, a buffalo, and a star. He told us we could go in and out of the maze as many times as we wanted and gave us a card to find 16 stations. Each station has a stamper and stamp pad and we could stamp our card.
We were told not to walk through the corn which we agreed to.
There are also signs saying that smoking, pets, and alcohol are prohibited.
When we entered, we could either go to the left for the horse or the right for the buffalo. We managed to go to the left and follow the entire perimeter of the maze to the exit area.
We reentered the maze and tried our best to try to find the various stations.
After we got there a bus load of kids from Ledyard Vo-Ag School also got there. Some of the boys seemed destructive cutting through the corn and were not concerned at all about finding the stations. A few of the boys and most of the girls were respectful and even called out to us to let us know they found a station.
At first, we saw large stakes in the ground and two bridges and figured there were stations there. The large stakes had speakers on them and the bridges cut across several rows of corn but no stations could be found.
It was easy to get lost in the maze, we took various paths. Sometimes there were choices to go left, right, straight, and even an extreme right or left. Some of the paths were wide as shown in the aerial view but others were more narrow. Still others were paths created by people before us as we only got half way in and the path ended and we had to go back.
A flyer advertises that “our seven acre corn maze has more twists and turns than the Santa Fe Trail” and a YouTube video said it is the most challenging corn maze in Connecticut.
The stations that we located and the order that we located them in were: #8 Bat Materson (3:04PM), #12 The Lone Ranger and Tonto (3:05PM), #13 Wild Bill Hickok (3:24PM), #2 The Sundance Kid (3:37PM), #11 Belle Starr (3:51PM), #5 Hollywood Heroes of the Wild West (3:55PM), #2 The Complete Series of the Adventures of Brisco County, Jr. (4:06PM), #15 Buffalo Bill Cody (4:07PM), #9 Doc Holliday (4:13PM), #4 Butch Cassidy (4:53PM), #10 The Completion of the First Continental Railroad in the U.S. (5:06PM), and #14 Billie The Kid (5:45PM). Most of the maze was fairly clean. We found sign #14 to be blocking the pathway of the maze and together pushed the station backed up to lean against a corn stalk and we let the woman at the front know about this.
As we got lost in 10 foot stalks of corn and seemed to walk the same paths over again and realized that some paths looked similar to others, I used my FitBit app on my I-Phone which has GPS. It showed where we were and what pathways we were already on. It’s accuracy is only within a few hundred feet so sometimes it would show we were going on a new path and then recalibrate and determine we were on the same path as before.
However, FitBit did help us find the last few stations. We were unable to find stations 1, 6, 7, and 16.
We got to the maze at 3 p.m. on Thursday and stayed past sunset until it got real dark. I used the app to get us out of the maze and we got out around 6:11 p.m. It took us about 3 hours and 10 minutes and 4.44 miles of walking to find 12 stations. The maze was much tougher than we thought it would be.
The woman we talked to at the front said her husband designed the maze using graph paper even though most think it was designed using GPS. She said that the corn was cut in those shapes when it is real small.
After promising that we probably wouldn’t be back again this year, she showed us a map with all the stations on it so we could see the locations of the stations that we missed.
Most of the stations that we missed were located in the top right section of the field but she said #6 was the toughest as it was inside the star. You had to go right of the star to go inside of it to get to that station.
It was interesting to compare the GPS map to the aerial view with the stations to see how close we were to finding the stations we missed and seeing all the pathways we made as compared to all the possible pathways shown on the aerial view.
While there is a prize for people who get all the stations, the woman felt sorry for us based on the amount of time we were in the maze and how hard we worked, she gave us the prize of a free ice cream sandwich anyway.
She said that even though they invite town school’s to come for free, the public schools are busy with Mastery Testing.
She explained that 99% of visitors are respectful of the maze and follow the rules. However, problems they have had with the 1% of visitors include people cutting through the corn which they feed to the cows at the end of the season, people smoking whose cigarettes could easily ignite dry corn, and people smoking marijuana which caused clouds of smoke to billow up from the corn field.
She said they have come on the loudspeaker and told people who were smoking to put it out or they will be found by the staff and kicked out.
They have a P.A. system to call out to those who get lost and recommended those who take the flashlight maze actually bring a flashlight. She said some just bring their phone and use the flashlight on it but the battery dies and the person not only doesn’t have a light, they also don’t have a phone to call for help.
She said earlier in the season it is harder to find people in the maze but that as the corn thins out and changes color closer to harvest, it becomes easier for people to find their way out.
However, she will stay until all the cars in the lot are gone but cautions those who walk to the maze.
We only saw a few of the stations with pink ink from the stamper stamped on the station signs itself but everything else was in great condition considering it was the end of their season.
This year’s maze was open from Sept. 1st through Nov. 2nd Sat., Sun., and holiday Mondays 10 a.m. to dusk and Monday through Friday 3 p.m. to Dusk. The maze offered group rates and dates. Military discounts were available.
I thought the maze was affordable for the amount of time that we were in there. It was $8 for 12 years and over, $5 for 6-11 year olds and $3 for ages 4 and 5.
They also had flashlight mazes Oct. 4, 11, 18, 25, and Nov. 1 from dusk to 9 p.m. with last entry at 7:30 p.m. You had to bring your own flashlight.
She told us next year, the theme will be the Headless Horseman. 2013’s theme was Gettysburg, 2012’s theme was the Titantic and 2011’s theme was baseball, according to the Preston Farms Corn Maze Facebook page.