FOLLOW THE AMERICAN ADVENTURE
Living Museum challenges children with maze exhibit
Looking to honor the distant past, the Virginia Living Museum reached back to the more recent past.
On Saturday, the Newport News museum opens “American Adventure,” an elaborate indoor maze in which guests try to take on some of the hard choices made by early settlers with the goal of beating the odds and surviving at Jamestown. The maze debuted at the Virginia Living Museum in 2007, with the name “Survivor: Jamestown,” and has been touring museums across the nation ever since.
It was conceived as a way to mark the 400th anniversary of the settlement at Jamestown in 1607, and museum administrators have brought it back for the anniversary of the first Africans arriving in 1619.
“We thought it would be a perfect fit,” exhibits director Fred Farris said. “It was very well received when we first opened it, and we’ve got some fun things to add this time around.”
The exhibit, conceived by the Virginia Living Museum and built by Minotaur Mazes of Seattle, won the Roy L. Shafer Leading Edge Award for Visitor Experience from the Association of Science and Technology Centers.
In 2007, the museum wanted to join in the highly publicized 400year commemoration of Jamestown, while staying true to its focus on nature and science.
The solution: A maze that illustrated the environmental issues confronting the settlers in 1607. Of the
104 who arrived on the Godspeed, Discovery and Susan Constant, barely three dozen survived the first two years.
“Those first settlers arrived at a paradise in many ways, but at a hell
in some others,” Farris said. “So in our maze, you have to make all of the same choices the colonists had to make. Where to put the colony — inland, on the seacoast, in the marsh? Pick your water source — use the river, dig a well, take ocean water? This was all real stuff they had to decide in 1607.”
At the start of each trip through the maze, a guest is given the name and identity of one of those first 104 settlers, as well as a device similar to an abacus that is used to measure the settler’s life expectancy. Make good choices, and the settler stays healthy; too many bad choices and the settler dies and the guest has to leave the maze. The exhibit includes interactive elements such as a childsized rock-climbing wall and a zip line.
At four spots in the maze, guests spin the Wheel of Misfortune, which represents the bad luck that often struck even those settlers who made smart choices.
Along the way, guests of all ages learn quite a bit about life in the new colony.
“Kids always seem to enjoy the Virginia Living Museum,” Farris said. “This is an exhibit that really did get the parents involved, too. They were interacting and playing as groups instead of just as individuals.”
With its return as “American Adventure,” the exhibit has added two stations where children can build Colonial-era fortresses — the simpler station uses logs and traditional building materials, while the other challenges guests to get creative and use balls, rods and other materials.
The museum will also offer related shows and tours as part of the exhibit’s visit.