Medieval Times

I took the kids to Medieval Times last Sunday.

The most exciting part about Medieval Times is the souvenir arena outside of the actual theater.  They’ve got two bars with a very bad selection of Medieval Beer.  I think the most Medieval Beer they had was Bud Light.

All the souvenirs are overpriced, but they have some unique stuff.  I had to limit everyone to $10.  They were allowed to buy whatever they wanted as long as it was under $10.  I bought a souvenir mug of Medieval Shiner Bock.

They had a torture museum with a $2 entry fee.  My kids wanted to see that.  I was not warned.  I’m glad they can read.  They did a lot of, “What’s that for?” and I did a lot of, “You’ll have to read about it and ask questions later.  Like after your 20th birthday or so.”   They had the displays setup with glass cases containing the device and next to it a nice little write up as to what it was used for.  Good examples can be found here.

They tell you to arrive at least an hour early, but try and convince you to get there 90 minutes early for the best possible seating.  This is all a load of donkey feces.

We arrived a full 80 minutes early.  We already had our tickets so passed by about 50 people waiting in line to buy tickets.  We were handed green cards and told to go wait until we were called.  This was before we were ushered into the souvenir hall with the torture museum.

The show started at 5.  They basically do something like, “Red ticket holders enter the door to the right, black & white ticket holders go through the center door, and green ticket holders to the left.”

If you imagine an oval shaped coliseum about 80 yards long and about 40 yards wide; for getting there 80 minutes early and pre-purchasing our tickets, we got to sit as close to the corner as you can sit.  It sucked.

You get to eat in the dark with your hands.  Never has a chicken breast with bones sticking out everywhere been so scary.  I swear I was waiting for someone to start hacking up chicken bones.  Why chicken?  They could have done some leg of lamb or something where you just hang on to the bone and eat the meat off.  That’s what I picture when I picture eating with my hands medieval style. 

I talked to a colleague of mine and he said he went to one in Chicago about 8 years ago and had a very similar experience so they aren’t doing any improving.  In fact, he and I both agreed: the the falcon was the best part of the show.  It only would have been better if they would have had little white mice that it could rip apart with its sharp talons.

Apparently medieval knights are all out of work wanna be members of the next heavy metal hair band.  In order to be an actor in such a superb play, you must be able to ride a horse and have hair down to your ass.  Acting is not required.

The waiters and waitresses and souvenir shop people kept calling me M’Lord.  It was all I could do to keep from saying, “Out of my way peasant”.

In total brutal honesty though, the thing that disappointed me the most was the simple fact that it could have been so much better.  It had huge potential.  It was just done wrong.  All wrong.  Except for the large waitress wench with the big breasts that cut her finger open and bled all over the to-go boxes.  That was cool.