Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Living Dungeons of Corn!

Two weekends ago, my wife thought it was a good idea to take the kids up to Roba's Farms up in Dalton, PA, for some pumpkin picking and a jaunt through the corn maze. While I had some petty misgivings about the trip, we loaded up the car and headed out to meet the Lasoski/Verbyla clan (My friends who participated in the Hawaiian Murder Mystery I blogged previously).

Roba's is a nice place with plenty of parking and a petting zoo of sorts with Llamas, goats, chickens,and an adorable rabbit town done to 1/20th scale. We barely got to visit the Pumpkin Pillow (a giant inflantible balloon for jumping), the pig races, or the pumpkin cannons, because, we almost became that Massachusetts family that called 911 when they were hopelessly lost in a corn maze.

A corn maze is a living dungeon, especially if you're under 5'10". Outside of a few wider areas, or at one of the bridges could you really see where you were within the maze itself. Plus I hadn't packed for dungeoneering, so there was no chalk to mark the paths, no iron rations, no graph paper, and no ten foot pole!

I'll bore you with the minor details but the gist of the maze was that we received a blank map at the start and within the maze there were 11 different stations, each with their respective piece of map. I believe it took us 45 minutes to find the first one, but we did have a full adventuring party. Three kids under three, two strollers, and five adults. Throw in some mud and no idea who was doing what and it was backtrack city.

We finally reached the first bridge and realized (a) we could see two of the stations... if we could just figure out how to get there and (b) we would have to lung two strollers up and down a flight of stairs. While our flag bearer was coming back with the third piece of the map, we encountered a large family who had collected all 11 pieces. Unfortunately for them, no one could actually read the map and get them out of there! Fortunately we had a postivie reaction check, (go-go high charisma), and we convinced them to lead them out. By the time we reached the commercially convenient snack bar 2/3 of the way into the maze, we had picked up two more groups and I started feeling like Moses leading the Jews around in the desert for 40 years!

For the last third of the maze, I stuck with the tried and true method: I stuck to the left side of the wall and we were out in less than 2 minutes. Of course the young girl who had assembled the map had taped the last piece crooked, meaning we could have gotten out even sooner if they had been line up right to start.

Granted, it was fun, but do I wish to do it again soon. Oh hell no! The only mazes I would like to be involved with have graph paper, 10' spiked pit traps, and random encounters. Roba's did have all the other attractions mentioned above, plus a nice playground for the kids, and I think I heard people mention a train.

But next time I'm bring my horseman's flail +2.




Our intrepid adventurers: Two fighters, a thief, a cleric, and three halfling cuties. My wife (taking the pic) might be a cleric too, as it took divine intervention to prevent her from killing anyone from the group who attached to ours.

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