EDMONTON – The Edmonton Corn Maze, just west of the city, is making history by becoming the first corn maze in the world to appear on Google Street View.
“We decided to try to do our maze into a Google Map Street View, so early one morning, we were out there taking a whole bunch of pictures, and we got them all stitched together, and now you can virtually get lost in the maze,” says Jesse Kraay, who has been the owner and operator of the Edmonton Corn Maze for 13 years.
Kraay was eager to apply the technology to his site, but had to wait until the corn grew to an appropriate height.
“We worked with a local photographer, and he took all the pictures. He knows what he’s doing, so he ended up taking over 600 pictures, and then stitches them all together in panoramas and then uploaded them to the Google servers and then it goes live.”
The Edmonton Corn Maze officially went live on Google Street View on Monday, and so far, Kraay says, the reaction has been very positive.
“People think it’s pretty cool,” he says. “It’s something they’re not really used to, and once they kind of play around with it, they have fun wandering through the maze on their computer.”
He says the interactive map has attracted viewers from all around the world.
“We can see where people are coming from to look at it, and it’s from all over the world. There are Swedish people, Chinese, and all over… it’s kind of cool.”
Kraay says photographing the maze took several hours, and was done by Edmonton photographer Kyle Giesbrecht earlier in August. Within about a week, Kraay says, Giesbrecht had put all the photos together and uploaded them to the Google Maps site.
“You can find your way through, and we’ve got a bridge in the middle and you make your way to the bridge and take a look around and then try to make it back out again,” he explains.
For more information on how to add your business to Google Maps Street View, click here.
You can view the Edmonton Corn Maze below.
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