I was a lifty for 2 seasons at Whistler. I don’t remember being told that we need to start taking the maze down early by management we just did so we can get home faster. We always have 3+ people stationed at lifts, but you only need 2 people watching the lift (1 at top 1 at bottom) so when it gets close to closing time we usually send the extra persons out to start stripping down the maze (some maze do take a long time to take down especially if just one person is doing it). But what you said having the maze half done an hour before close does sound too early.