Suburban Camelot

The Orlando Medieval Times sits across a four-lane suburban artery from a MEGA SMOKE SHOP that lost the M and the E and never replaced them; it's not actually in Orlando, but in Kissimmee, a city primarily composed of strip malls, chain restaurants, hotels, and rental home stock to feed the visitors to Disney World and Universal Studios.

As we approached the looming castle I assumed that it was going to be mostly facade, but this was wrong. The whole building is built of solid block, walls at least 35 feet high, and in the 41 years since it was built the walls have become covered in beautiful creeping vine. The vines completely devour the crenellations in places, the points no longer hard aggregate block but wholly consumed by plant.

After you walk past the ticketing booth you're given a paper crown, Burger King style, with colors to reflect the knight you're going to be rooting for. The employee handing out crowns has an incredible niche skill: he can instantly predict the size of your head at a glance. No one in our party needed to adjust our crowns, he nailed it on the first try. This man has looked at thousands of heads and now has a fine-tuned filter for where to notch the cardstock diadem.

As you walk into a large waiting hall, you notice that everyone is wearing their crowns. We all know what we're here for, and we're all committing to the bit. It would be more notable to remove the crown, to signal that you're above this level of silliness, but on this night we're all prepared to act the part of court nobles for two and a half hours.

If you haven't recently attended one of the rolling roadshows aimed at children (Disney on Ice, Cirque du Soleil, etc.), then you're probably unaware of the modern marvels of children's theater technology. These shows all have booths filled with toys that spin, buzz, flash, strobe, shimmer, and create spectacle, and Medieval Times was no exception. The only difference was that you could also buy real swords and daggers here alongside the flickering plastic swords and wands. In the corner there's a mannequin that made me double take with the Weekend At Bernie's level of commitment to the outfit.

At the end of the hall the King and Queen are sitting on a raised platform on their thrones, and if you get close they make eye contact with the kids and wave regally, making sure that everyone who approaches the throne gets the proper level of royal attention. For $45 you can purchase a knighting ceremony where the royal herald sounds a fanfare to bring your attention to the newly christened knight. The herald is playing a real fanfare trumpet, and his tone is clean and crisp; I don't know how his career brought him here, but he knows his way around a brass instrument. Every kid who participates in the knighting ceremony is thrilled, grin on their face, and the King and Queen treat each one with the seriousness of the real thing.

The actual event takes place in a long, cavernous room, the sand-covered arena in the middle and rows of tiered theatre seating on either side, sections marked in the colors for your knight, professional lighting and sound hanging over everything. The rows and seating are optimized for the wait staff to move in and out while the show is happening. The food is all straight out of the Sysco bulk food menu, but that's no different than half of the restaurants in the US; it's mostly well-cooked, straight down the middle fare, inoffensive and easy to cook at scale.

Every employee here takes their job seriously, in the best way possible. No one was mailing in their line delivery, no one looked bored that they have to do this show twice a night, seven nights a week. These are professional actors, and they're as committed to delivering a heartfelt and earnest performance here as any other acting gig. That commitment is contagious, and it transforms what might have been a kitschy dinner‐theater diversion into a communal spectacle. When the drama ramps up, you cheer because the performers have already earned it, one sincere grin and confident tip of the helm at a time.

As the show begins and the master of ceremonies and knights enter, it's difficult not to be impressed at what's being executed in front of you: the arena is not that big, but they are pulling off real acts of horsemanship and skill in an elaborately choreographed dance. At one point one of the knights inadvertently falls off his horse and you realize that not everything can be tightly controlled for each show, that these are still live animals with their own volition and bad days. This is as much a show about the horses as the knights, with much of the event dedicated to dressage and synchronized movement. Some of the knights absolutely fly at full gallop on their horses, others more slowly, the difference in comfort and skill in moving on a horse at high speed apparent.

Everything in the show is leading up to the joust. See-through netting lowers from the ceiling to separate the audience from the jousters and their shattering lances. I wonder if the netting has always been there from the beginning, or if it's the result of an accident and litigation at some point in the past. The knights are paired up, horses racing towards one another, lances shattering on steel shield. Every fight ends up going to foot, the sword choreography more staged and careful than any other point of the night. When you're swinging metal swords at each other every night, you want to pull your swings and make sure you're landing hits with precision. Even dull weapons are still weapons.

There are winners and losers, a betrayal, and a redemptive triumph. The good guy wins at both 5pm and 7:30 every night, seven nights a week. The Kissimmee castle was the first Medieval Times built in the United States, opening its portcullis in 1983, back when Disney Epcot was brand-new and Reagan was halfway through his first term. Forty-one years later this oddly sincere anachronism hums along, a reminder that even in theme-park country, sincerity, skill, and earnestness can still wear the crown.