Amazing future: Couple has big plans for corn maze in Victor – Qwivals is coming

The Corn Maize outside of Victor will be ready for Halloween fun by October. In past years, the design has been different based on different events such as Sept. 11, the Montana wildfires, and the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial. The theme this year was picked based on the name of the new park being built on the neighboring property.

By VINCE DEVLIN of the Missoulian

http://missoulian.com/articles/2004/08/27/hometowns/ht01.txt

VICTOR – On the ground, it’s a confounding corn field.

From the air, things become a bit clearer.

The Corn Maize, a series of dead end paths, loops and switchbacks through six acres of corn, opened for its fifth fall season Thursday with, as always, a new maze to confuse customers.

It will be the last year a maze is cut through this field.

Next year the corn will be planted about a half-mile north of the present site and will be but one of many attractions at a new $2 million year-round family fun park.

After maze designs that, among other things, have honored wildland firefighters (a helicopter with a water bucket was incorporated into the 2001 maze) and the New York City rescue workers who lost their lives on Sept. 11 (the outline of a fireman was cut into the 2002 pattern), Maize owners Quinn and Sandy Kirkland this year are honoring … well, themselves.

Bitterroot Valley Maze

1497 HWY 93

Victor, MT 59875

[email protected]

(406) 363-5080

Fly over this year’s maze, and you’ll see it spells out Qwivals, the name they’ve chosen for their new entertainment park.

There’s something else visible from an airplane, too: Just up U.S. Highway 93, dirt is being pushed this way and that. Now under construction on 20 acres about 4 1/2 miles south of Victor and half a mile from the Corn Maize, Qwivals Family Fun Center and Restaurant hopes to open next May or June, Sandy Kirkland said.

Outdoor activities will include go carts, kiddie carts, miniature golf, A BMX track for bicyclists, remote control car races and "water wars" (where slingshots launch water balloons at opponents, who are protected from direct hits by plexiglass – but holes in the plexiglass won’t keep them from getting drenched).

The corn maize and haunted attractions will move to the new property, too.

Indoors, families will find bumper cars, a rock climbing wall, arcade games, mini bowling, a restaurant and Delta Soft Play, an area similar to the play equipment for tots and toddlers found in some fast-food restaurants.

Future plans include a pond for bumper boats and a slick-road course for go carts with tighter corners and faster speeds.

Qwivals will also specialize in birthday parties and group events.

The Kirklands, both graduates of Ricks College in Idaho, have already earned associate degrees from Birthday University, and plan to obtain their bachelor’s.

Birthday University?

"It trains you how to make better birthday parties for people," Sandy said. "We’ll have a birthday coordinator, and parents can be as involved as they want to be or sit back and let us do the work and enjoy the party if that’s what they want to do."

It took a day of schooling to earn the associate degrees. It will take another day to get the bachelor’s.

The Kirklands also graduated from Foundations Entertainment University in Kansas City, a three-day course covering "location-based entertainment."

The mom-and-pop-like Corn Maize that spawned all this not only confounds customers who try to find their way through the six acres of corn. It’s confounded critics who wondered about a business that only operates for a little over the two months leading up to Halloween each year.

"Everybody thought we were crazy," Sandy said.

But 17,000 people visited the "Field of Screams," "Demon’s Dominion" and the "Gothic Dungeon" last year, according to the Kirklands. And they heard more than one of those folks say the Bitterroot Valley needs more attractions like them.

"We heard the need and wanted to act," Sandy said.

The Corn Maize has proved popular. People not only try to find their way through the maze, the Kirklands have plenty of surprises for them on the way in October, when you never know when a chain saw-wielding employee may leap out of the stalks and fire up his weapon. (Don’t worry too much – there’s no chain on the saw).

The first year it was open, a scarecrow greeted visitors at the entrance to the maze. The next year one did too, only this time it was alive and ready to scare the bejesus out of the unsuspecting.

The maze will remain a fall attraction at Qwivals.

The name, by the way, stands for absolutely nothing.

"Our attorneys told us the best thing is to make up our own name," Quinn said. "I started with a ‘Q,’ since that’s what my name starts with, and we threw the ‘w’ in just sort of whimsically. We typed ‘Qwivals" into an Internet search and got no matches, so we figured we were safe."

It takes an hour or two for most folks to wind their way through the maze. "Some people take longer, but some get seriously lost," Sandy said.

Corn cops wander the maze ready to help those who can’t figure a way out.

And next fall, after they find the exit to a whole new maze, people will find lots more fun awaiting them at a place called Qwivals.