Twin Cities Harvest Festival and Maze

Super fun time family time.

I went for the first time last year, and vowed that I would make it a point to go every year.  A short 20-30 minute drive from Minnetonka, the Harvest Festival is in a great location, with ample and free parking.  We always have fun, with a little bit of everything to do, good stuff for all ages (but mostly kid orientated).  Admission is $9, quite reasonable for what you get once you are there, and early admission is only $7.   Plus, they take credit cards, so you don't need to worry about bringing cash or searching for an ATM.

They have a band playing, food vendors, bouncy house type rides, pony rides, a petting zoo, helicopter rides, corn pit, a hay bale maze and of course the corn maze.  Rides and food cost tickets, but one ticket is one dollar, so you can easily convert how much you are actually spending on each thing you do, or eat.  The corn pit and corn maze are the only 'free' items, after paying admission of course.

My niece is quite fond of the 'spider tower' (or something like that) that requires you to climb up several levels of seat belt type netting then down an inflatable slide.  It never fails, she cannot make it on her own, so I am forced to go in too and not only use every ounce of my muscles to get myself up through the unstable vertical levels, but push her butt up since she can't pull herself up.  I am tired just thinking about it.  We always have a fun time going down the slide though...so, its worth it.  Pony rides and the pumpkin sling-shot are also on the top of her list.

The corn maze itself changes themes every year, 2011 was baseball, 2012 is military.  The maze comes with a map when you enter and you find 20 different points in the maze that have questions posted.  These questions, when answered correctly, get you into a drawing for Twins Season Tickets, motivation to find them and not just wander the maze aimlessly.  

Great job Harvest Fest Folks, keep it up!

In search of doing some more "fall activities", we ended up here at the corn maze.  From the road it doesn't look like much, but you walk in and it's actually a pretty good sized attraction.  It is pretty wholesome, no booze or any adult themed spots, but we weren't looking for anything like that.  The petting zoo was great with all the llamas and cows, chickens, goats, sheep.  The price of the feed was a little steep for a tiny amount (by steep i mean $1 haha), but most of the animals didn't even want to eat by the time we got there.  Still, fun to pet all the creatures.  They had a couple rock climbing walls, moon bounce, pumpkin slingers that you could pay a little bit extra for.  Also, helicopter rides!  I totally wanted to do one but it was $35 a person :( It would've been cool to see the maze from above, as it was 1991 twins world series themed.  We went through the maze and there was little markers along the way with trivia.  Answer the trivia correctly and you can have the chance to win season tickets for 2012!  I thought that was cool, but I know absolutely nothing about baseball or the 1991 world series, so we had fun just wandering around taking silly pictures.  The maze took us about 30-40 minutes.  The corn pit was by far the most popular attraction.  It's a huge area filled with corn kernels.. we each stepped in to experience it but I could see why it would be really fun for kids, or even adults had all the kids just suddenly disappeared.  We stuck around for awhile and got some fries and mini donuts.  It was a fun little saturday afternoon on a decent fall day.  Like Luke said, "Wholesome family fun".

We had a blast!

This was year 3 of our corn maze excursions. We've been Sever's for the last 2 years, but with the price creeping up there ($13/person) we checked out this place instead.

The theme was the 1991 World Series and it was fun! Admission was $9/person for just the corn maze, which is all we wanted. We did not check out any of the other activities available, but hit the maze right away. We found our way through the place, but I say every time, "I thought I was good at maps, but I guess not."

Each of the stations had a question from the Twins season, but we didn't know all the answers. I don't think they were actually even posted at the end.

Due to the beautiful weather, the place was crawling with people - kids and d-bag parents either talking on their phones or actually going through the corn when you're not supposed to, but either way it was fun.

Also, they have people working there who can direct you if you get lost. We did not, but I think the guy was laughing at us - we kept seeing him every turn and I think he thought we were lost!

Don't get lost - <a href="/redir?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.cbsnews.com%2Fstories%2F2011%2F10%2F12%2Fearlyshow%2Fliving%2Fparenting%2Fmain20119180.shtml&s=d819ac2feab3721afc7c1be6a382857e352a9039352f5e3d2f15b6977762c757" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://www.cbsnews.com/s…</a> Just go and have fun.

It's a good way to spend a beautiful afternoon. Only drawback - they don't actually have a corn dog stand.