Scottsdale, Arizona.

While exploring Scottsdale last February, we drove by a large building resembling a medieval castle. The sign on the front of the building read, “Medieval Times.” I wondered if it was a theme park, an escape room, or another type of venue. A few moments on the Internet told me the story.

I soon learned that Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament is a popular dinner theater chain that offers an interactive experience inspired by a medieval feast and tournament. According to Wikipedia, the chain has nine venues in the United States and one in Canada. All of the venues in the U.S. are castle structures, and the venue in Canada is in a government building in Toronto.

We arrived an hour early and were asked to present the online tickets we had purchased at the ticket window. We were also presented with VIP upgrade options that provided various levels of priority seating. We opted for the lowest level VIP class for an extra $15 over the $68 per person charge for dinner and the tournament. As it’s been a year since we attended this performance, the pricing could have changed, so check before you go. Every person was given a paper crown, the color of which determined the order of entry into the theater and table assignment.

We then entered a large room to wait for the doors to open. Of course, beer and cocktails were available for purchase and served in different-designed take-home containers. We opted for two pina coladas in mugs. While we waited, I stepped over to a small stage where the queen and two of her subjects were staged for photos.

Finally, the time came to enter the arena, and we were ushered to our assigned seats. Our VIP seating qualified for the first row, but it was in one of the corners instead of the arena’s center. Our hostess introduced herself and soon brought our meals; a bowl of tomato soup served in a bowl with a handle was the entree. No utensils were offered, but I understand they were available if one asked. Water, lemonade, and Pepsi were included with the meal, and bartenders stopped by regularly to offer drinks from the bar at extra cost, of course.

The main course featured a half-chicken, a slice of bread, a short section of corn on the cob, and a potato half that looked baked and then deep-fried. I enjoyed all the food served, and a small chocolate eclair was eventually served for dessert. People with food allergies are given options upon mentioning their special dietary needs to the hostess.

While we ate, the tournament got underway. Each knight was given a specific-colored costume that matched the color of the paper crowns and the seating assignments. The audience was encouraged to support and cheer on their knight, in our case, the blue knight.

When each knight won a competition, the queen gave him a flower. The knight would take the flower to his section and toss it into the audience.

Upon winning his first competition, the blue knight tossed his flower directly toward Lynn. According to a Reddit post, the show is staged so that each knight plays the same part in the show due to the specific stunts they perform. However, they rotate costumes and sections of the arena so that they don’t always “work” the same audience section.

Unlike many jousting tournaments I’ve seen, this one features much more stage fighting after the joust. Two jousting runs are made at each other with wooden jousting poles. When the actors dismount, the horses make a beeline toward the backstage exit, and the spotlight falls upon the combatants.

Eventually, our blue knight was vanquished, but the queen spared his life (probably a good thing, as medieval actors are hard to find.)

The stunts are generally well done by these professionals. In one competition, the red knight lost his horse, and the black-and-white knight came at him on horseback with his jousting pole. The pole hit the red knight’s shield and splintered into many pieces as the red knight was knocked off of his feet. I was able to capture the moment by sheer luck when I pressed the shutter button on my S23U cell phone.

According to Wikipedia here, the shows were created in the late 1960s in Spain. Jose Montaner created the first medieval dinner theater venue, which became the Medieval Times experience. These shows featured actors reenacting jousting tournaments from the 11th century. The knights hailed from the northern Spanish kingdoms of Aragon and Navarre and the southern French village of Perelada. Interestingly, Montaner reportedly inspired the storylines from his own family history. The shows were brought to the United States in 1983.

A note about the photography for these action shots: I brought my Sony RX-100v and Samsung S23U cell phone. From our corner seats, the scenes are challenging for distance and lighting. I didn’t like the results from my Sony camera as viewed on the back of the camera. I soon discovered that my cell phone couldn’t be left in automatic mode as the camera had unusable motion blur in the action. I put the Samsung in Pro mode, set the shutter speed to 1/180 sec to stop action, and used the exposure compensation setting to help raise the exposure.

The DNG format images were brought into Lightroom for cataloging and cropping, then sent to Luminar Neo for noise reduction and sharpening. I have many more pictures processed than I am featuring in this post. You can view the entire gallery on my Flickr site here.

All in all, we spent a bit over $200 for dinner, drinks, and entertainment. Plenty of souvenirs were available for purchase, including complete suits of armor for upwards of $4,000. We purchased the drink mugs as our souvenirs and called it good enough.

John Steiner