Fabric makes great sails on playa so be careful. Our first maze on playa was made of the shade structure cloth. It works ok, but in a high wind tends to want to flap and rip.
Our second and subsequent mazes (labyrinth) have been made out of plywood stood on end. to form 8 foot high walls. We applied for funding, got it twice, its expensive to haul 900 sheets of plywood and 800 2x4s out to playa.
The drive with all my pics from then crashed a couple of years (learned to backup since) So here's some animations.
You asked for tips concerning mazes on playa:
1. Make it robust, drunks lose coordination and crash into things.
2. Drugs and altered persons lose patience and want out even if it means bashing their way out, have escape routes clearly marked.
3. People that drop by and are excited, love it, and want to participate later - wont. So do not plan on them coming back (there are exceptions)
4. Clean up will take longer than you thought. If you have everyone in BRC go through it once and 5% drop something that can be a lot of crap to pick up.
5. You wont be as nearly productive as you thought on playa for set up if its hot. work early in the AM and then again in the evening, take a break in the mid day.
6. Beer lubricates volunteers.
7. try to make it simple in design. Since dimensional plywood is very exact in size we made a press to stamp out metal clips that screwed into place to hold the sheets in place. The 2x4's stiffened it up overhead to form one big block. Not a single piece of lumber was cut to make ours. When we returned to the default world all of the wood was used in construction.
8. Have sufficient help - nothing like going to playa burning out on your project and not seeing anything else. Sounds like you are on top of pre-fabrication. Thats the key, miniize playa set up time.
9. If operation requires people, solicit as many volunteers beforehand. Gifting some schwag for time always works. We usually have coins pressed. Lasts a lifetime, and relatively cheap, this is the proof pic from the coin shop.
Here are the pics from our proposals, This is the first iteration in plywood, way to complex. and we had people panic in it because there is only one right path out. After finding people crying in it, we finally had to remove a bunch of panels inside to make it easier.
Colored here for contrast all panels were primered off white to protect them and help keep cool. Made a great canvas for graffiti too.
so have fun and look forward to seeing you on playa
) And you get to offer something to the BRC folks who wander through.
