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[Listen to:]
October 5, 2001 NPR
"All Things Considered" Interview
The Amazing Maize Maze® is
produced as a professional entertainment attraction. Although we welcome the
‘down-home welcome-to-the-farm’ aesthetic, we strive for the highest standards
in ground appearance, quality art direction in print and signage, staff performance
standards, technical support, press relations and customer service. 
In these areas we pull on our experience at Disney,
Universal and Busch Gardens theme parks to build a new alternative in regional
entertainment centers…The American Farm.
The maze reaches across generations: children attack it
like a 3-D Nintendo, teenagers revel in the challenge of the game, baby boomers relax in
this park environment, and seniors use the walk to reconnect with their own memories of
playing in a field of corn in earlier days. In this way the maze assists the park or farm
site in becoming relevant to all ages, and thus, the family. A unique opportunity occurs
when a site preserves the rich tradition of our rural past and provides a welcome
invitation to the community to enjoy its natural beauty.
After two years of development in the American adaptation
of the art of the maze, the first modern ‘maize maze’ was produced on the
Pennsylvania farmland in 1993 and won a place in the Guinness Book of World Records.
With music, scripts, interactive audience activities and directions, the Amazing Maize
Maze® was recognized as a new form of family entertainment by the media
throughout the United States. For two more years the production and operation
aspects of the maze and the rules of the game were refined to provide a successful
entertainment experience. In 1995 the Amazing Maize Maze® received
worldwide acclaim and established new educational and corporate team-building
programs. In 1996 the American Maze Company ("AMC") was formed with the
goal of ‘spreading the word’ and bringing the Amazing Maize Maze®’s
unique show to farmlands across the country.
Since 1993 1,000,000 players have walked through
AMC’s cornfields in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Virginia, North Carolina,
Iowa, and California. Many of our ideas have been copied around the world.
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