Fine Dining - Medieval Times: Knights on Strike

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

It's dinner and a show at Medieval Times! The boys bear two hours of L.A. traffic to drive to Medieval Times only to discover the Union cast of this location are on strike and protesting outside Strike Captain Erin Zapcic shares what the striking workers are aiming to accomplish Garrett does a deep dive on the history of the franchise Imposters fill the castle as Union scabs have been bused/flown in from other Medieval Times locations 2 full-length songs about Michael & Garrett’s night at Medieval Times: “Overture” (2:47) Music by James McEnelly Lyrics by Michael Ornelas Performed by James McEnelly “Baby Dragon Hunt” (1:12:43) Music by James McEnelly Lyrics by Michael Ornelas Performed by Michael Ornelas Backing Vocals by James McEnelly The robotic sensibilities of the Red Knight has the boys asking What's Going On Over There? Two new audiodrama segments! Falconry! Jousting! Bloodlust! JUB's got a Kiss Cam! Terrible food is capped by awful "Baby Dragon" (chicken) and what seems like store-bought sheet cake Kyle finds what seems to be a pube in his eclair Voice Cast: Bonnie Gordon, Sean Burgos, Jon Capraro, Emma Davalos, Simone Davalos, Steven Zurita Music by: James McEnelly (@Ramshackle_Music) Theme Song by: Kyle Schieffer (@JazzyJellyfish) This episode contains allegations against Medieval Times that have not been proven in a court of law. Conversations regardling the strike are merely opinions. We're on Patreon! Get an extra episode every month, extended Yelp from Strangers segments every other week, merch discounts, download access to our music including the 7 singles from our Olive Garden musical, and more! Patreon Producers: Sean Spademan & Sue Ornelas   Get our 5 Survival Tips for Casual Dining at www.finediningpodcast.com!   Send us your Medieval Times stories at [e-mail].   Follow us on TikTok and Instagram @finediningpodcast   Let us know where we should go next by leaving us a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, PodcastAddict, Overcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. We read every one!   Next time on Fine Dining: Sizzler! If you have ever worked for Medieval Times and have a story to share, send it to [e-mail].

Hello and welcome to the fine dining podcast the search for the most mediocre restaurant in America I'm your host Michael O'Lornelles and I'm your host Garrett's work and we are on a mission to find you the most average restaurant out there the Matt is and we're gonna do it based on its atmosphere based on its service and Based on the food of course, it's gonna be based on all three of the things, the entire experience, and today's pick is an experience. Yes, it's not just the food, actually, it's barely the food from being real. I don't know what's more impactful.

The excellent food or the excellent performance. Well, we'll talk about all of it. This week we went to medieval times. For those of you who are unfamiliar It is a dinner theater Presentation where they serve you food. They adjust. They have like 30 live horses They've got falconry and they've got some of the worst food you could possibly have, spoiler alert, the food sucked. What an understatement. So, we'll get into that soon.

If you want more from us, we do have a Patreon page. We give you an exclusive episode every month that you can only get on Patreon. Gone to some cool places for that. Rudy's barbecue, Fudruckers, Panda in, the progenitor of Panda Express. We even reviewed the food court, the entire food court that you and I actually met in. Our origin story is that we met in a food court, which is wild, and now we do a food podcast.

So head on over to our Patreon, that's patreon.com slash fine dining podcast to check that out. There's other perks in there as well. Fine dining party of two. Give us a five star rating on Apple. You know the whole spiel, but for now, our table is ready. Your table is ready, follow me. Have you tried our chicken braze? Serving pancakes and ribs. I recommend this spaghetti.

We're here to serve us fine, not to impress. Your table is ready. Complementary butter and bread These walls have growth signs Knit knack, cowboy hat, good luck at Autograph guitar, some crap from your city Behold the trust me of mediocrity I'm dining Yes, fine dining

Fine dining Two letters on the sign are shining Neon flickering irregular timing Identify the perfect pie Two letters on the sign are shining Neil Flickering a regular timing Identify the perfect by Proud of ten Buying dining Buying dining

The following episode contains workplace allegations against medieval times that have not been proven yet in a court of law. which becomes the two-ten, then six-o-five, then back on the five. It's me, Andrews. Two hours later we arrive at the lot of the castle of medieval times. It's a line to get in and a rat holds a sign, heralding that the knights are all striking. Roll down your window, they give you a pamphlet On it a digital code Scan it in here of the plight of the workers And the pay raise their rightfully old

Jump off of horses and blow this trumpet for God's sakes don't mix up those nouns. You stay out here, let the patrons inside. We've got to be still in their crowds. Line up right here, get a souvenir photo. You look great here, you're all styling You paid for this picture, so please may I ask Why is that one guy not smiling? Did the protesting workers ruin your mood?

Mention it, we'll just ignore you Move along, go inside, give us your cash $32 beers we will pour you Yeh, lix, lix, lix, lix, lix But hold on, hold on, $32 for a single beer That's outrageous, that's insane It's nine bucks for refills That's still $41 for two beers.

Shame on all of you. Alright, here you go. You gave us your coin, now filter inside. Isn't this all just so charming? It's five under a dot without further ado. The show is already starting. The show is already starting. Yes, the show is already starting.

First impressions. So as we're driving up, the first thing I notice is this big inflatable rat outside. I saw that too, but I thought it was just part of the environment. We're by Disney, we're by Notzbury Farm. I think I remember seeing it six years ago. Like I think it's been there for a long time. Okay.

But this time it had a sign in a tan that said, did in like just like poster board with like marker on it just said nights on strike. Kind of telling of I guess the experience that we then had, there were protesters outside of medieval times. And we drive up, we enter the parking lot. There's one protester right there. We drive by him. We see another really cool protester. He looks like the dude from Big Lebowski. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. He's the one who gave us the thing through our window,

just kind of like a, hey, we're on strike. And here's, I guess, a rundown of why. It seemed like a really efficient way to get information across. Yeah. So traffic really wasn't impeded. It's boom, everything's business is usual, but here's some information to go along with it.

Now, apparently traffic wasn't impeded today, but they have been before. Yes, and they recently changed that about two weeks ago. Okay. Yeah. There was a car that drove through protesters. Yeah, it just, some guy apparently got sick of the waiting. Just went right through him. There were no serious injuries.

I heard there was like a broken tailbone. That was the most serious. What do you mean no injuries? That's a big injury. I was just like no life threatening injuries. Like, I don't know what you're looking at. I don't know. I can tailbone. I imagine that's not cool

You're gonna probably have to sit on a donut for a while, but like that's the worst Insane. Yeah, someone also got out of the car and started fighting people at that same time. Yeah, not this time No, no, no, we saw no fights. That wouldn't we were there Because of this big protest happening outside of medieval times We actually took a second and spoke to the strike Captain, so we're actually gonna throw to that real quick My name is Erin Zapsick. I'm one of the organizers here at Medieval Times performers United Bonapark I'm originally from the Lenturst New Jersey Castle and I have lived here in California for the last five years

So we are the performers here. We formed our union back in November. Since then we've been in wage negotiations with the company. They gave 20% plus plus plus increases to the non-union castles and their initial wage proposal to us was something like 2%. So we call ourselves medieval times performers united. That's a very common naming convention for unions, but the company didn't like that and they used that trademark infringement lawsuit to get our Tiktok account banned and at that point we knew we were gonna have to take some sort of big drastic action because they were actively silencing our voices. They are actively silencing the voices of our supporters on social media. If you try to leave a comment on any of their Instagram pages on Twitter anything like that. They delete the comments, they block you. They're like actively suppressing what is going on here.

They delete the comments, they block you, they're actively suppressing what is going on here. We walked out on February 11th, and now we've been on strike as of today, 85 days. We are trying to get our first contract. We have actively been in negotiations with the company since November, but really in terms of our collective bargaining agreement for the last month or so. And our key three points are better wages,

better working conditions, and more stringent horse training and safety protocols because force abuse is a problem here at the California Castle. Wages are also a huge problem. Most of the guys here in the show are making less than $20 an hour to jump off a horse running at 25 miles an hour. The cost of living here in Southern California is around $25 an hour. We're trying to get the lowest paid members of our bargaining unit in alignment with that cost of living, which is not a really unreasonable ask. We also have professional musicians, trumpeters in the show, that make $16 an hour. These are people who've been with the company. Some people have been here 15 years and making $16 an hour. So those are our key points. That's what we're fighting for. The ticket stay now and refundable,

but you can get a refund if you don't want to cross the picket line. And you know, we hope that we can count on everyone's support and we'll make a big announcement on social media when we're back to work. We can't wait to entertain everyone. We literally cannot wait to go back into the show. Like, I just really want to stress that because we love our jobs. I think it's a testament to how much you love your job when you try to fight to make change. And that's why we're doing what we're doing is because we really just want this workplace to be the best it can be

So there's lines that lead to other lines that lead to other lines like different sections different corridors stuff like that And I'm kind of like we've done enough waiting in line. We bared traffic. Oh, God. That was like two hours It was two hours from leaving my place to even arriving at the parking lot. Like this was a day, this was a hike. Getting there in and of itself was a nightmare. We drove at rush hour, that's our mistake. Well, I mean, it's a five o'clock show. Yeah, so what can you do?

What can you do? It's just kind of like that's the show time. So now we're like waiting from spot to spot inside, at least the inside waiting, comfortable waiting. They're professional waiters. Right. And they're right, yeah, they're by Disney. I feel like Disney pioneered the industry of waiting.

I mean, they really did because of the like set design in all these different places. It gives you a lot to like look around at, you feel thematic and- They're doing the same thing here. If there's one thing I would say medieval times did a truly great job with is the theming, the indoor like decor and all that.

Yeah, some of it like you look a little closer and you can kind of see, you know, you can see how the sausage is made. Like it's not perfect, it's not perfect. It's not all authentic, but it looks all right. But like, I'll give him credit. It looks almost as good as your average back lot. Yeah, almost.

Yeah, sure. I mean, if it's meant to just be in the background on camera and not scrutinize too closely, like it passes, we pass into this area where they're giving you crowns. They're trying to give you crowns. And they're just like these like paper, like remember like you'd go to Burger King in the 90s

and they'd give you one of those crowns. They still give you the Burger King crowns. I'm too this day. Happy to hear that that hasn't changed because that was my shit as a kid. I still get the crowns if I ever go inside to a Burger King. You have to. You do have the mind of a child

So mind of a child the maturity of a child the IQ of a child the life expectancy of a child I don't know what that means. I was gonna say are you thinking this is like Oregon trail times or actual medieval times I'm gonna have dysentery. I'm gonna get bitten by a snake. You have six kids with the intention of three making it to adulthood and like, that's a good ratio. Yeah, 50%. Wow, that's a great success right? Yeah. 50 over 50.

But hey, the good thing is the other 50% that don't make it, they turn into crop fertilizer. Yeah. I look at your face right now. That was a situation where I said yeah, and I kind of zoned out at my 50 over 50, just thinking 30 over 30 would have been better. 30% make it over 30.

Yeah. And then I stopped thinking that and listened to what you said. And it kind of just stopped me in my tracks. And I was like, oh wait, did I just yeah, him saying that kids become crop fertilizer? And the answer to that question was yes. Yes you did. Oh God.

So they give us crowns based on our seat section, I guess. You get like a seat assignment when we're in the red section. There's like the red section, the blue section, the black and white section, the red and yellow section. Green, yeah, there were six total. And they give us the wrong crown. Like I said, red, he gives us the black and white section, the red and yellow section. Yeah, green, yeah, there were six total. And they give us the wrong crown. Like I said, red, he gives us a black and white crown. I was like, wow, they're really coordinated in such a way

that you have like secondary and tertiary colors. Like we're red and we got black and white crowns. Weird, whatever, we go through, get into another line. And this is like a cue to have a group photo taken. There are, you know have a group photo taken. There are a group of eight of us, and we get to have a little group photo. And we get there in the remedial way.

That we did pay extra for. That we did pay extra for. And we get to the front of that line and the ladies just like, you guys are the wrong color. And we're like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You can't, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We made you a crown, we made you a crown. I'm probably the wrong color historically for the era. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, It's based on 11th century Spain. Yeah. And so we have to go back, we get our royalty revoked, we have to like turn in our crowns.

And then they replace them with the proper color, we go back through, get to the front of the line, they take our photos, and this felt like a first grade class photo where it's like short people in front, taller people on the risers behind, it was only missing the laser background, I want that. Yeah, yeah. And our group, little rag tag bunch,

we've got a bunch of different people, but one person in particular, my friend Herbert. Now, Herbert's come with us to eat several times, we've talked about him. You can actually hear his voice if you go listen to our Panda in Patreon episode, we did a little interview with him, come over our Instagram, a picture of Herbert will pop up

every once in a while if you want to see that. That's right, we're on Instagram at Fine Dining Podcast. We're on TikTok at Fine Dining Podcast and you can email us whatever you want. Find Dining Podcast at gmail.com. We might regret that, but I don't know, maybe we won't. Now, this group photo in particular is kind of like every photo herbert has

where at least he knows the picture's being taken. He has a face that can best be described as thinking about where the bodies are buried and is anyone on that trail? Like, I mean, how else do you describe that? Like, it's truly psychopathic, psychotic. I don't know. I'm sociopathic.

That's sociopathic. See, that is a blank stare. There's no emotion in those eyes. And I know how much he listens to stuff about serial killers. Don't get me wrong. He's one of my favorite people, but I think he has to be because I don't want to become

one of said bodies. Speaking of bodies, the room right to the right of us, it looked just like a torture room. Yeah, there was like, and there was a full night suit of armor and just odd wooden, were those chairs? I don't know what was in there. I couldn't tell what it was. Tortured device. I mean, the lights weren't on in there, but it just felt like this area where they were working on new torture implements. Like that's where the right thing. Like their food.

Yeah. Oh God, that's the kitchen. Beaking of torture implements. Ugh. But yeah, so we took our photo, we walked past the torture room, and then it opens up into this big courtyard. And in front of us is where we're supposed to go

to find the arena in the little entrance way with the souvenirs. Yeah, which is funny. Right in front of us. Souvenirs to the right bar to the left. More souvenirs. Every entrance leads you directly to a place where you purchase something. Yeah. Now, if I have to spend money on one thing in this entire experience, I'm putting money on the fact that You've gathered up some facts. Am I right? Oh, you are right. And these facts? They are free. You do not need to buy the $30 souvenir glass to drink these facts. Well Garrett I'm ready to drink up all of these facts. You've gathered them up. It is time to learn more about medieval times in this week's Resty Fact Roundup.

Yee-ha! Before we get into it, my mom is not a big fan of the whip noise that we use to round up each new Resty Fact. It's new restaurant fact. It's like she thinks the facts will round themselves up and no whip needs to be done to organize them. So we need to do a different sound to basically censor the whip noise. What do we want to do this week?

Well, we were at medieval times. So like a royal court trumpeter. Oh, I like that. Let's jump in. The earliest incarnation of medieval times began in the late 1960s in a converted restaurant on the family farm in Mallorca, Spain. It started in Spain? Yes. I would not have guessed that. That's kind of... It's appropriate.

Yeah. Allegedly, Tino Brana, the stuntman from the jousting scenes in Charlton Heston's 1961 L.C.D. was involved in staging these original jousts. We've got some credibility staging these, okay? The founder claims his ancestry can be traced back to Charlemagne, and he actually is related to actual Spanish nobility, giving a marketable credence to the 11th century modeled performance. So this is about as legit as legit can be in its origin. Yeah, it's modeled after 11th century Spanish jousting,

and he's literally related to 11th century Spanish jousters. It's authentic. It is. Or it started that way. The first true location opened up in 1983 near Disney World in Orlando, with the second soon after in 1986 near Disneyland in Buena Park. That's where we went. So they were both Disney adjacent medieval times. They were like, this will pair well with a form of entertainment that is nothing like this to give people options.

Yeah. And you drive by a big castle. Obviously, the kids are gonna be like, let's do this. Right. Right. The location we went to in Buena Park has a 70,000 square foot castle with an arena that sits over 1100 guests.

The one we went to? Yes. 1100 people can fit in there. Yeah, that seems about right. It wasn't a huge arena by any means, but it was respectable for like a dinner theater, so for sure. There are currently 10 castles, nine in the States, and the 10th in Toronto. So none in Spain anymore?

None in Spain anymore. Interesting, okay. Each castle has 20 to 30 horses and they're all actually bred at the same ranch. So a lot of inbreeding? So are you kidding? No, no. Medieval times owns a 250 acre ranch in Sanger, Texas.

Oh, you mean every horse at all locations are from one ranch? It makes sense, they own the supply of horses. There are around 300 horses at all times at this ranch. So they're bred there after performance. Once they reach a certain age, they're brought back to retire and or stud. Nice. Good job, horses.

That's the retirement I want. But not with horses. Okay. But isn't that kind of the typical American retirement home life anyway? Yep. So much syphilis. Which is true. I know.

The amount of pasting outbreaks at nursing homes is frankly a little off-putting. What was the over-under on nursing home orgies coming up in the rest effect roundup for many, both times, and even think of that. nursing home orgies coming up in the rest effect round up for medieval times. Even think of that. Ooh, this is a literal boomer's gone wild segment. Geez.

The medieval times monarch changed in 2017 slash 18 to feature a queen instead of a king for the first time in the history of medieval times. The show script has historically changed every six or so years, so it's almost time for a new script. So the story entirely changes or it's just updates both potentially. This is something that confuses me, So the latest iteration was 2017-2018. But all of the female employees to this day are still called wenches. Yeah, I felt really weird when a lady came over while we were just sitting there and was like, I'm a bar wench. Do any of you guys need any drinks? After that, okay, I got used to it.

The first time was just a little shocking. I did a double take. I was like, wait, I got used to it. The first time was just a little shocking. You don't make it. I did a double take. I was like, wait, did she just... Even the gift shop employees are wenches. That's just kind of special. In 1997, the company filed for bankruptcy over $10 million owed in back taxes

from both the Orlando and point-out park locations. And the only reason they did this was to prevent the government from seizing their assets. The whole time they had this money, they could have paid it, and once they're legally required to do something about it, that's when they'll act. Ah, yeah, America. As Aaron already spoke about, in 2022, workers at the Linhurst, New Jersey and Buena Park California locations decided to unionize over pay, working conditions, and animal rights concerns. Workers from the Buena Park location went on strike in February and as of recording

they have been going on for over 80 days. Right after the workers walked out, the company tried to fly in nights from their Toronto location. Right, and this is Huffington Post reporting this. But they got turned away by Homeland Security because they didn't have the proper work documentation. I wonder if they were trying to bring their like jousting equipment and axes. I know they weren't, but that's a funny thought.

Homeland security just a full-on night shows up at the board. And just full plate armor. Just trots up on a horse. I'm here for work. Alright, well that'll do it for this week's Resty Fact Roundup. So there was a lot of memorabilia everywhere, but it's like that non-specific rainbow glow light up, kids' weaponry, like those retractable swords and axes and princess crowns. And then I guess they had a couple things for adults. They were like some nicer like bound notebooks and stuff,

but overall seemed very like cheap, kitty souvenir stuff that you can find. The point is to get parents to spend money. Now, once you're inside, they allow you to buy an announcement that they read meant for like kids' birthdays and stuff. And we tried to make an announcement that was just mentioning the strike even at all,

and they refused despite the fact that we were told that they'll kind of read whatever as long as it's not inappropriate, which it was very tactful. It was basically like a, we hope that the strike can be resolved and everyone can, you know, resume with their lives. And instead we just got, sorry, we can't take your $16.18 or whatever it was. I'm like, all right, they looked very uncomfortable and maybe I ended up on a list or something. We'll get into that later.

This is a very interesting environment and I struggled rating this a bit. It's automatically above and beyond the effort level of the vast majority of any restaurant we would go through. Sure, sure. It is full commitment to the theme. That is objectively true if we're judging this just based on the decor. It's pretty high achieving. You know, there's even like a little stage for nightings. Yeah, it's that you can go up, but I'm gonna rate this as if I was going

to a Shakespearean performance. So I'm gonna rate this as a theater company. Right, and that is what it presents itself as. It is dinner theater. It is. So you do have to judge a theater company. Right, and that is what it presents itself as. It is dinner theater. It is. So you do have to judge the theater part of it and part of that is the execution of it. Part of that is the chemistry between the cast.

And I have years of experience in dinner theater and stage management. This is what I went to school for. So I feel like I'm qualified to rate this as a theatrical performance. And I watch wrestling. so I know how to look at staged combat and critique that as well. You do.

And also, I mean, atmosphere for us is a whole bunch of things, right? It's the decor, it's the environment around us. That can sometimes be other people, like other patrons. It can be the cleanliness of their bathrooms, which they weren't very clean at the end when I went in. But when I went in, at first they were spotless. Yeah. It's funny how much one show worth of people can ruin a bathroom.

It looked like a war zone. So I guess let's get into the theater of it. Yeah, well, let's get into the theater physically. You walk into the hall where the drinks and the souvenirs and all that are with the announcement booth. Very kitschy, very well executed, I would say at least organizationally speaking. There's a sword sharpening stone where you can buy more realistic swords, which I thought is pretty neat,

but then you walk into the actual arena and there's probably four or five tiers of seating, not bleachers necessarily in 1100 seat arena. And it's a big round horse track. Yeah, and then the track, they're not racing, but the base of the arena is covered in sand and dirt. And we are led to our front row in the corner seats. So we're not like right along the side,

but we're in a corner. We've got pretty good seats. We paid for the celebration package, which comes with cake and a group photo and little banners that you get to wave, which, you know, I thought those were kind of a fun addition. There were at least a couple members in our group who really enjoyed waving the banners and had a fun time getting into, I guess, the team spirit of it, which is highly encouraged.

Each section is broken down by the color of the night you're cheering for. Yes. Now, first and foremost, it's important to note that the people performing this show and a lot of the workers aren't from this location because of the protest outside. The strike. They've had to fly in workers from other places like the Scottsdale location. All over, really, yeah. Yeah, Scottsdale's one of the nail locations.

Yeah, there was a big Greyhound bus outside. So you have all these performers, but there's almost like this air that they don't belong there. They're imposters, this medieval times, was full of stolen identities and there were imposters abound. And our sections assigned night may have been the biggest imposter of all.

We had the red knight. and this dude had like Gaston energy. Like he could not stop smiling in such a way that to me was like in author. Like it's like someone had a spray, squirt bottle, and just sprayed him anytime he wasn't smiling and like raised him that way. So he always remembers like, oh shit, I got a smile. Like he had like a fearful smile. You know how monkey's smile when they feel threatened? It was that kind of smile.

He had a chimp like smile where he was like, oh, he's gonna tear my face off, but really he's just scared. And before we get past it, I wanna give his smiling that this is way too much award for this week. Huh? This is way too long.

I agree, I never saw him not smile. It was off-putting. I was like, immediately, I didn't buy this guy. I was just like, I see through this. I know, okay, it's your freshman year. This is your first role you got in a Shakespearean play, and you're just a background actor. So the director's like, just stand up there and smile. Don't get in the way. And then he became like the lead actor, but never dropped the behavior. So he's just constantly riding around on a horse just shooting his pearly whites and I thought it was just way too much Not to say this man wasn't good at his job. It seemed like his combat was pretty good his Horsemanship was strong. It's like his combat was pretty good. His horsemanship was strong.

It's just his face. That's not a mission. Yeah, like not like his face, but his expression, Garrett, bro, you were fine until we saw your face. Wolf. Yeah. No, we're not attacking the way he looks. We're attacking the way he chose to present himself.

Yeah, we're attacking the way he chose to look. Not the way he looks. It was just very inauthentic. I don't know. He did a good job. Yeah. There's six nights in total and there's like a narrator-esque guy on a horse. I don't know how to describe him.

Like he was hosting the event. He was kind of the first one out kind of Bringing in the competitors as they were going in and then up overhead. There's a queen on a throne and like a was he a Chancellor yeah, Chancellor hand of the king and I guess the night on the horse that kind of led the show head of the Kingsguard I don't know something like that something like that. Yeah, yeah. So they had all these characters, but the PA system was a little not great. I don't know. I don't want to say not like it wasn't blown out, but it was too loud to the point where you were losing clarity. Maybe it was a cheaper PA system. It just I don't know. They skimped somewhere there. I don't think it was for lack of Sounder lights trying it may have been speaker placement honestly like they just weren't

Spread out enough to really get because you know how sometimes you'll go to a theater or something that has like a mic didn't experience and In the audience there will be the occasional speaker like under seats or something I think that would have served them well to kind of convey the information a little bit better. Because honestly, for a dinner theater experience for kids, I was struggling to follow the plot. I think, okay, so high tones, low tones, I didn't get any of that. This was part of the acting too. Most of the actors had a big problem with dropped line endings. So that's just like Tape Roon or whatever it is. Push through to the end of your sentence.

Yes. Project. Exactly. Yeah. Don't end on a dropped syllable. So for you, you're judging them based on their speech patterns and the theater stuff. And I'm sitting there, the wrestling fan looking at like

the bumps they're taking, the staged combat. They're jumping off of horses and managing to make it look not impressive, which is a wild combination to me. I don't know. I, like I just thought like the falls, I get it. You wanna be safe, but to me they weren't executed at a level

where the stunt work impressed me. I agree, like I'm gonna try to be nice of him. Okay. Because I understand these are guys wearing a bunch of heavy metal. Yeah, going 25 miles an hour on a horse And then they're asked to jump off and rule from this moving horse It's a really dangerous activity and it's to be fair most of the time they executed it well here You're discounting my bloodlust You're not taking that into account. I want to see stuff that looks like it. Rex them.

I feel like the blue night was really great at this. I think he was the smallest guy. He was the most agile. He looked like, I don't know, Ray Mysterio size. Like, now you're speaking my language. Yeah. It's just like, this guy would be capable of moves like this. And his combat was fast. It was on point. Yeah. You could tell like he knew what he was doing.

Now during the actual combat, they had like the flint edges on their weaponry. So whenever they hit sparks fly, it's a cool little touch. I actually, I really enjoyed that element of it. All the swings that were obviously supposed to miss, I thought were a little too broad, I guess. It quote unquote broke K-fabe. Do you know what K-fabe is? For those of you who don't know what K-fabe is, it is a wrestling term that basically means real within the world, right? So the K-fabe of it is I am actually swinging a sword at you. If you break K-Fabe, it's I am obviously looking like I'm swinging a sword at you, but clearly not trying to hurt you.

It's that element of disconnect. I'm going to blame this on the fact that this isn't the group that's used to working together. Because of this strike, they had to fly in nights from different castles. This is a newer production company. It's a Hodge Podge. So they haven't had the rehearsal time. They haven't had the time to build up that chemistry. Yeah.

It worked well enough for the intended audience of a kid. That said, we're men in our mid-30s here to evaluate a thing as we see it in our mid-30s. So it's just, I guess, less impressive of a dinner theater experience than I was hoping for. I remember going about six years ago to medieval times. And I remember it being a little bit better due to the strike. Actually, a big part of the strike is the lack of trumpeters.

Just the impact of being able to feel live brass instruments versus playing it through a slightly imbalanced speaker, add so much weight to the experience that I felt like we didn't get. So I was actually really bummed at the lack of any live performed music or trumpeting or anything like that. You don't really, really bugged me. What?

Some of the squires were running around and picking up the weapons on the ground by the blades. Well, that's the K-fabe of it, right? The blade is supposed to cut you obviously. They're doled and they're not going to be real weapons out there designed to mess people up. That said, some of the swings they took at each other, the ones that were supposed to make contact with the other people's weapons,

I was constantly worried about fingers. I was like, you're gonna get your finger jammed or hit or something like that. I don't know if anyone got hurt. It's hard to really tell, but some of those little coordinated combat moments, I thought, look, sloppy, some in ways that took me out of the performance

in some ways that made me concerned for the performance Neither of which are the emotion you want people to feel. I want to talk about the costume being. It was excellent. I have no expertise in terms of like was it authentic or not, but it looks solid. It really probably wasn't authentic, but from at least our viewpoint, I couldn't see any mistakes on it. All the stitching seemed strong. The use of color and metal was great. I think the most important element for me

when it comes to the costuming is that no point did I feel like I'm watching like a cheap kids' birthday party person you ordered out of like the yellow pages back in the 90s where it's like, oh, get a power ranger at your birthday party. And when you're a kid, it's magic, but then they have like a gut. And clearly just don't match what you expect. This is professional theater.

This seemed like professional costume, not just someone on Hollywood Boulevard. I liked how all of the crests just they felt recognizable. It's almost as like that the Lannister lie in or something. Right. As a 21st century audience member, I could just clue in, I'm like, okay, that's a recognizable crest. I don't know where it's from, but it works. Yeah, and even if it's not, even if it was made up, it just had that authenticity of style. Yeah.

Let's talk about the games. Yeah, let's go. The one that impressed me the most was the jousting for the rings. Yes. They had rows of little golden or brass rings that were suspended overhead and then they had their like jousting pole spear thing and you would go through it and try and raise your pole to the correct angle and level to hook the rings. And they had a very high success.

They did. I was very impressed. I only saw like one or two misses through the entire performance. And that's including when they then lowered down even smaller rings and put them on the side of the arena. So they're kind of charging along the wall and reaching for a ring that I mean, I don't know it looked like maybe two inches in diameter and yeah It was it says feet seven feet eight feet overhead for them. It looked difficult. Yeah, so in that regard just as a show of an impressive skill Good job and all the writers seem to have a good command of their horses Nothing really seemed to go off script. No. I will say they did do like, oh God, I don't know what the term is.

But when the horse is like dance, PFA, did you just say the letters PFA? Okay. In classical dressage, the movement, dressage is the word I was thinking of. The movement of the horse walking around the edge of the arena in a certain prancing manner. It's called PFA. Is Dressage when they're doing like their little like postures and dances or whatever? That's the training and the control of the horse. So only one little move that they did, I thought was cool.

I think it was called the Capriole, where it jumped in place. And I thought it was well executed. It looked very cool. The horse looked energetic, but there were, I think, only three horses during that segment. It may have been all six, and I just was so not into it that only one of them stood out to me. But I noticed that. Now speaking of being noticed, our knight, the red knight, Mr. Smiles himself. He would come over with flowers and throw them into the audience. And I'm thinking about the Chachki of Mediocrity, this monster on our wall that is decorated with wall chachki's from all over, that keeps our score of all the restaurants that we've been to. And I'm thinking of cool little pieces

that I want to add to it. And that flower would have been a nice little addition. So I'm trying to just get eye contact with the guy, even if it's as a joke to be like, hey, throw me a flower. This dude is taking all the effort that he has in his body to not make eye contact with me. He is looking up and over

and literally scanning over and he seals the same thing happen. You, I was dressed like a ride. You yourself are cleavage. It's not the ride out, but you, Michael Ornellis, are cleavage. People only take a glance at me when they know I'm not looking.

Yes. Oh God. Because this man looked at me, I made eye contact with her. Sure. I had a few moments, I'm like, good job, bro. But here's a thing, if I'm cleavage, we had as much of a green light as you can get. We had four people that we came with in my section pointing to me to try and get his attention, like, hey, it's okay to look at these boobs,

and he's still refused, and I just gotta ask, Garrett, what's going on over there? What's going on over there? What's going on over there? Should I worry? Should I care? What's going on over there?

What is going on over there, Garrett? There was something off about this man. Yeah, the weird smiling. Like, it was a totally uncanny valley. Right. Do you think he was a robot? Like a rejected Disneyland animatronic that they just tossed on horsemen?

Yes, it was because animatronics have like a repeated motion that they can't make. I was just perfectly in the blind spot. Yeah. They tried to fly in the Canadian Knights. They couldn't do it. So what are they gonna do? Crap, Disney's right here.

Let's go to the Disney Animatronic Reject pile. Go steal from it's a small world. Throw it on horseback. Oh no, it's neck doesn't move that way. It can't look at that guy in the front row. No matter how much it wants to, it can only throw roses to the sides because that's the animation of it.

Like joints only go a certain way. Yeah. As much as I hate to say this about another human being, he did give off big animatronic energy to the point that I think you have a case here. Yeah, not even a case. I think you're right. Yes.

That explains why their jousting was so precise. Exactly. And why, like, the rings that they were able to get. That's why a lot of the stage combat felt so robotic. That's where the sparks came from. Yeah. Yeah. Wow.

I didn't realize that replacing your workers with animatronics is a cheaper option than just paying your workers, but no, it's not. It's clear, like they have the money. They're just not- They just do it for the workers. They just want to flaunt it. Yeah.

And given that this segment always has 100% accuracy and is totally not satirical. Not at all. Wink, wink. I think we have figured out what's going on over there. What's going on over there? It kind of weirded me out how they, I guess, quote unquote, removed the dead bodies. Oh, yeah, yeah. They help them up and then kind of walk them out like a wrestler with a torn quad. It's like, oh, they're participating.

It's a half measure, like commit all the way and make it seem like you're dragging a dead body out or just walk with purpose towards the exit. Right. One or the other, don't have acid. They were selling the dead body, but also there wasn't a spotlight on them so they didn't have to really. Yeah. Like it's very well known that if the spotlight's not on you, you're not really a part of the show. So like don't half move this thing. Also, I mean, just the inclusion of dead bodies. Let's talk about the plot a little bit because they did combat, right?

They did jousting, which by the way, the jousting, that was cool. It was pretty cool, you know, seeing these wooden sticks shatter on impact with these shields doesn't seem easy, like an easy day on the job, no matter how you slice that, to have wooden poles shattering off of a shield that you're holding on horseback.

And the shattering goes towards your face. And they do this jousting and certain nights get knocked off. And then the other night, the one who won the joust, steps off and they engage in hand-to-hand combat. Now, there are six different teams and they do this until the tournament widdles it down to the final two. And at one point, this one night who's now just all of a sudden kind of an antagonist, he said some misogynistic things to the queen to turn the crowd against him.

Genuinely, I don't mind bad character traits being used to make you dislike someone. Massage and he seemed lazy, but it's also easy. It's something for kids to pick up on and go 20-23. It's really lazy writing. It is lazy. A six year old, all they would have to do is I'm overthrowing the kingdom. A child don't understand that. Easy.

Or like, I'm your brother and I'm taking the throne. That's not misogynistic. Get into some soap opera stuff. Or it's like his twin then comes out later and throws him in an elevator shaft. So this guy, all of a sudden, you know, they do the jousting, they get knocked off the horse, they duel a little bit,

and then the queen asks him to yield as in don't kill the guy like these aren't fights to the death they're fight for sport and then all of a sudden he asks for them to be fights to the death and now they just are because he insisted and was it the chancellor that was also kind of pushing for it the chancellor was pushing for it but also the entire crowd was pushing for it. That's true. They did kind of feel like the turning point was the crowd was like killing that whole the crowd. And the queen was like, yeah, okay, whatever. It was all the guys are the ones

in charge, not the one with the crowd. What a pushover of a queen. And then just all the other nights that aren't this guy are just now killing each other as well. And after they're jousting matches, it's like murder fast, okay? Yeah. And then the plot ends up, you know, that guy comes down to the final two and then our night being the other guy and they engage in combat. And of course, the animatronic wins because it's programmed. It's programmed. So it was a very repetitive plot like joust, hand-to-hand combat, talk a little. Joust, hand-to-hand combat, talk a little. Joust, it was a show that any six-year-old could pick up. Yeah, I thought I had too much iteration.

I don't know. I was kind of as exciting as the jousting in combat is. I hit a point where I was over it and it was about the halfway point. So, you know, I know a lot of it is also designed just to give you time to eat and pay and do the logistical stuff of your also dining. But let's talk about that. They time right when they bring out the first food to you, they start reading announcements like Happy Birthday to this person and there's a key of forte in the parking lot that left

its lights on and you know announcement stuff like that and it was while everyone was getting their food and that's where they just snuck them all in that it lasted forever. It did. I know that you specifically were the one noting that was really annoying to me. It was a lot. It's just like okay you're at a Lakers game and the KISS CAM doesn't stop. That's what it felt like. That's such a funny comparison to me. The idea of like, you're not seeing any more of this game until all of you have smooched.

It's like, I'm just here with my friends, do it. And then, oh, that would actually be so funny to go to a Lakers game with an endless kiss cam. And now, a word from Mark, totally not made up sponsor. Oh, hi there. It's your favorite sponsor, Job, and I'm back. And they gave me a camera. Not a great idea. I'm just going to point it at people and encourage them to smush their faces together. That's right. Job's gotta kiss, cam, baby! You're most intimate moments for the whole world to see,

and I'm gonna be the guy just standing there watching and kind of putting pressure on you to do it, and then I'll kind of put words on the screen that cheer or cheer you depending on my mood, and it gets the crowd on my side. I'm kind of like an orchestra conductor, and I'm playing all of you like a fiddle. I know the conductor's not the one who plays the fiddle, but I'm not great at metaphors. Sometimes I'll do a thing where I pointed at you and just a buddy of yours

and everyone in the crowd laughs, they're having a good time, and you look over at them and you're like, this is crazy. They look you right in the eyes and they go, oh, this is home, you're safe! And everything just falls away. It's just you, your friend, and the world of possibility.

All you have is now. You feel vulnerable. And you just say to yourself, screw it, and you go in for the kiss. But I switched the camera on you. I put it on another couple right at the opportune moment. I did it for a laugh. You would have done the same thing.

Does that make me a bad guy? I don't think so, but I'm sorry you felt like you had the rug pulled out from underneath you and now you can't even really talk to that friend anymore. The perfect moment was just ruined. You asked for a refund? That's what I'm there to film. So that sounds good to you call me not on a phone Obviously just take your shoes off and leave them at will call I'll come pick them up and almost like an ascender

I'll kind away. I'll find the owners of those shoes and we'll link up. I'll run the kids camp for your event It'll be perfect everyone will love it. I gotta go now. Okay. Bye I can't for your event, it'll be perfect, everyone will love it. I gotta go now, okay, bye! So throughout this performance, once I guess murder was established, yeah. I lose a little lighting cue, every time someone died, all the arena lights flashed red. Like a little strobe light of red. I like that the lighting cues were done really well throughout this entire performance. I would say production wise, that was maybe

the strongest thing. I would agree with that. Major props to whoever stage managing this, your cues were on point. I think you were the absolute best part of this performance. Yeah. And I thought that the worst part of the performance, maybe the chancellor's incessant voice cracking.

You know, the type of character. Your majesty. I don't know. He just had a lot of like, crackiness and I was like, this is so overdone. I was like, yes, this is the theater voice. The thing, annoying thing you do in undergrad when you're with all of your friends.

It's so annoying. It's so annoying. Your jaw is clenching so much right now. I thought it was gonna actually fall off. Can't you feel my visible discomfort? Yeah, and as an audience member, I was also uncomfortable because hearing that is cr- Hearing you do it just now made me cringe.

Hearing it there, I was just like, ah, come on. Like, I don't know. It didn't need that. So I think the last thing to talk about before we score atmosphere, they had a falconry little exhibition. Yes, that was pretty cool. It was just a bird on a lady's wrist and they pull off the blinder and she just sends it out into the crowd and it does the same loop like ten times and then it comes back to her and it goes away. The first loop kinda neat, the tenth loop, a little repetitive and then the way she catches it at the end is cool. And that was it, I don't know. I was more interested in this than you. I wanted to see the Falcon hit someone. It was getting close. That's the thing.

You always love to just witness potential lawsuits. I feel like that's your shit in a nutshell. If I had to boil down your interests, it's being present to lawsuits that won't affect me. I really wanted to see this Falcon, like claw piece of chicken or something or like a birthday boy. Go off script, do a cool thing.

The way she caught it, it felt like she threw a rope that almost caught its ankles. That isn't what happened. But it looked like it and it just looked really neat as she pulled it back and put it on our wrist. So the way it works, there are straps around the ankles. They're called jessies. And they're leather straps, they hang down. So you can actually hold onto those straps

as the bird is mounted on your wrist so it doesn't move around too much. Now the key to doing this, you don't want your grip to be too tight or too loose. If it's too loose, the bird will feel uncomfortable. It'll flap around, think it has way too much room to move. As we saw at the end of the performance, like this bird was to screaming and flapping. It was just, it was having enough of it. But you're supposed to hold the straps with just enough so it feels secure and that it can't move and it'll behave better.

Oh, so it was more of just like it didn't have its footing. So that's why it was okay. And just like another reason we were told this was like a baby bird was newer. So I think it's forgivable. It's a younger bird that was just enough. That's why it came to me and asked me to chew up my chicken and spit it into its house. Yeah. So if we put this all into a thumb rating, there's imposter's About yeah, there's a protest outside that's you know drumming up quite a bit of disruption I would say rightfully so yeah, oh definitely but it still factors into the experience These imposter's haven't had time to rehearse their stage combat. It's rusty

Our night is clearly animatronic and avoiding me. I don't know, you put all this together with a pretty cohesive physical atmosphere, but still not perfect, but like I'm not that impressed by a lot of the show. And again, that probably has to do with the performers themselves. I gotta go one thumb down overall on a place where I thought it would be a layup that

this place would get two thumbs up. Yeah, exactly. I really did, but you look closer, you scrutinize it, and there's just so much going on here, some a part of the show, some not, some behind the scenes, and it just factors into this more negative than positive experience. So I'm going to go one thumb down. Yeah, I agree. I just looked at this way.

This was a well planned and long running show at its core. But my main gripes come from the lack of timing between the newly inserted cast members, slash imposter's and their general lack of chemistry. Remove the inflatable rat and the protesters and still use this imposter group and at best This is just a group of hungover BFA students with some budget in this iteration Theater students with a budget honestly might be a sadly very true way to Describe this whole thing. That's what it was. Yeah, but bring back the entire company, safe together, happy, and trumpets. Yes, and trumpets.

I want to trump it back. Yeah. Once the protest is done, everyone is paid, once everyone is happy, and it's business as usual, there's our two thumb up experience. Potentially. Potentially. That has the chance to do it.

But overall, imposter heavy, one thumb down. Yeah. Good morrow, and welcome to the Outer Court, belonging to her majesty, the Queen. In light of current changes to regime, please do allow for an extra fortnight's time to process licenses for goats and wine. Now you, the bleeding one, would have you to say. Speak plainly, share your tragedy this day. for goats and wine. Now you, the bleeding one, whatever you to say. Speak plainly, share your tragedy this day. My Queen, imposters have usurped the throne. They're still so it's shade our halls and

shame our home. False banners hang as stolen vallors lies, the castle lays before us compromised. False knights from Scottsdale and Orlando came, and soon they stripped our titles, knighthoods claimed. But yet, this heart feels greater agony, once loyal knights switch sides in treachery. I failed my queen, their numbers were too great. They burned with greed, one cannot satiate. I have escaped, though wounded heavily. I've shared this news now.

Please. Remember me. Duh. Duh. Duh. Duh. Duh. Duh.

Duh. Duh. Duh. Duh. Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, eternally in perpetuity with endless honor to your family, all generations forward on this day will sing and praise the greatness of the name! Eh... Sir, what's your name? My queen! He's... dead. He's dead. Alas, this night's unfortunate demise, a noble hero dead before us lies. Our kingdom will have justice, this I vow. What more reports of sorrow have you now?

My grace, I must report an oddity. A knight, nay, construct, overpowered me. No human spirit dwelled behind its eyes. I thrust my sword clear through, it didn't die. No blood inside this thing remained unthazed. My time had come. The final of my days. All hope was lost. Its hands were round my throat. But then it stopped while starting to emote. It flashed a massive smile while waving to an absent crowd. Some mystery had you. an absent crowd, some mystery at you. I wisely use this moment to escape. What demon nearly stole my life this day? The castle's lost, and we can only play.

Although you've lost this fight much honors gained. You've done your duty, injury sustained. Now rest, and heal your wounds. You've earned the break. I pledge that soon, this castle will retake. Those thieves, imposter may be well supplied with all advantages our walls provide. But we have weapons stronger than the bravest nights,

the paragons of man, with fortunes gifts, our victories at hand. Please come with me. I have a brilliant plan. The service here is pretty much designed to stay out of the way. It's like when you go to those movie theaters that offer a full menu and you order food throughout it. They know that you're there to watch a show, so they're not trying to be in your face too much.

Now, the meal itself is structured in a way to where you shouldn't need too much, right? Yeah, it's designed to eat with your hands. They do offer some silverware if you want it. It's like take out plastic wear basically. They try and keep you topped off with wet naps and stuff to wipe your hands, but overall, they come by with trays. They dump out food onto your plate

and ask if you need anything. The way they do that, part of the tray will be good. Part of the tray will be dry. Part of the tray will be soaking wet. Yeah, exactly. Unless you're holding it perfectly level, you're getting juices sloshing around in literally every dish.

So you're gonna have wild disparity in food quality from item to item. Yeah, and I think we had a wild disparity in food quality among the eight of us. We did. Yeah. Now, our server, I thought was fine. You know, he stayed out of the way. Because we got the celebration package, we had a little ticket stub that said cake and

the number of people. And then we had one that said photo and the number of people. And we were, I was told, give this to your waiter first thing. There was a clear expectation of you. It's your job to make sure you get these items by letting your waiter know. Yes. And I let him know right away.

He was like, okay, I'll pick that up later. And like four times went by where he's passing through. And I'm trying to get him to take it because I'm like, we paid for this cake and we paid for this photo. And it has been stressed to me by an employee here that I need him to have it for us to get these things and he keeps not taking it.

And it bugged me. He indicated like, I see it, I get you. But I don't know how many people he's serving. I know that there's a lot that goes into this. It's out of sight, out of mind. It's not even an expectation that he'll be forgetful, but it's just given that another employee told me, if you want this, make sure your waiter gets this.

That was weird. She was so clear about this process. And I felt like she took extra time to stress the importance of give this to your waiter. So the fact that he kept not taking it was frustrating me. I don't think it makes him like a bad server by any stretch of the imagination, but I was just like, I want to make sure we get the package we paid for. Eventually he did take it. Maybe I was the one being pushy there.

I can acknowledge it. I mean, I wasn't like in his face or anything, but like every time he'd walk by, I'd like acknowledge it and he would like, I could tell he was kind of getting tired to the point that I even got like an almost passive aggressive. My lord, I know it's there. I'll speak into which they call you my lord. That was kind of dire. Which I could get used to as a narcissist.

I'm not a narcissist. I liked the guy. For me, he was very friendly, he was professional. A little thing he did was there were large groups of people, but every few people, he took the time, he paused, he made eye contact, and he asked how everything was, specifically to a person.

So I think it's the same thing as, let's say you're on stage, and you look at one member of the audience. And you focus on them and you kind of perform to them. Yeah, I feel like this is what he was doing. And you got to be that person. I got to be that person. And as is typical for me, I'm out of direct eye contact

of anyone. No one will acknowledge me. I was very happy with the service. Like, I was the person, so he was great. Now there's other elements of service, too. There's the people who chose not to read my announcement that I tried to get, just calling for unification, by the way. I wasn't trying to make an announcement that's like, you guys suck, blah, blah, blah. There was no part of me trying to take advantage

of the system. It was like, I hope the issues can be resolved and you guys can move forward. And they kind of just looked at like, oh, we can't do that. And that's weird. That's going to dampen the experience. There's the getting the wrong crowns just due to oversight. And then the weird mistake of like, oh, we need to get you new ones. Go back this way, kind of being thrown back and forth in the little entrance hall. One good thing, the people after we left that let us back in to use the bathroom. The bathroom lines were terrible when we left. Yeah, so we went literally after we had already exited the show.

They were nice. The Wrench stuff was weird too. Just someone telling me to call them a barwrench. I'm like, I won't. Yeah, and you could tell they weren't 100% comfortable doing that. It's like, okay, I'm doing my job. I'm a W job. I'm a lunch. Yeah. So all of it kind of adds up to

a bunch of people with various levels of competency doing their job with varying levels of enthusiasm, but no one being a Negative presence for me. I'm just gonna go zero thumbs overall on this service experience. They were designed to stay out of the way and be not a big part of your night And I feel like they actually accomplished that so just a flat neutral zero thumbs. I agree. I'll just give this zero thumbs It was a generally friendly to neutral environment Even though there was the cloud of the strike. It was okay. Yeah. All right. Let's hear about this food. Ugh. Food. Yum.

So the good thing about the food. Let's start with that. There's no good thing about the food. The good thing about the food is that everyone gets the same thing and that it's easy. You don't have to order. That's the one positive I can say about this food. The positive thing about the food is that it arrived. I don't even know if I'd call that a positive.

Like if poison arrived in front of you, would you be like, oh great, the poison's here. I want to say this before we shit all over this. We were told during the pandemic, they cut down the size of the kitchen and that they prep all of the food at the same time for all the shows for the night. And since the pandemic ended and they reopened, they haven't increased the size of the kitchen and they haven't changed their practices.

So they're prepping three shows worth of food at once. It's gonna be dry by the second and third show. And the first show is at like 2 p.m. We got the 5 p.m. show. Food was on our plate probably around 5.25.30. So three and a half hours after it was ready, not even prepared, probably four hours after it's prepared. And this is total.

So they're cooking about 3,000 portions worth of food at once. Assuming they're sold out. But yeah, they're sold out. So I just want to throw all this out there. I understand that this isn't an easy task. Mass cooking is hard. That said, that's yeah. We are here to review your food

and we are gonna talk about the food that we received. We will. So just know I'm being understanding about this. It's not an easy job, but it doesn't take away from the fact that this was not good. Yes. So you first get a piece of garlic bread and tomato soup.

I think this was the highlight of the entire experience. You're not only a pleasant dude. This tomato soup was spaghetti or broth. It literally was like if you strained out the o's. I don't disagree. I also happen to like spaghetti o's. Like it's not bad. And the garlic bread, it was just like a thing frozen.

It tasted like boxed garlic bread. It was soggy. But yeah, that's the problem. I love the store bought oven bake garlic bread. I love it. I, when I'm not watching what I'm eating, I will eat way too much of that. It's a typically delicious thing.

I like a little bit of like a crunch, like a little toasting to my garlic toast. Of course, yeah. This was just soggy with spaghetti or broth. This felt like the medieval times equivalent of cut up hot dogs that you throw at a four year old. That they eat with their fingers on like a little, like off the bare table or the placemat because you don't get a wrong.

A four year old is the target audience. Yeah, but adults are there. No four year olds are just there unattended. So yeah, you got to make stuff that adults can at least tolerate, I guess. And I had a better time with this than you did. Sure. The taste was fine. Mm-hmm. I don't dislike spaghetti or zingarlick bread. There was nothing bad, or even noticeable about the flavor of either of these dishes.

I think the flavor of the tomato soup just tasting so cheap ruined it for me. Like, there's a place that I love their tomato soup that's got like olive oil and like some seasoning in it and little croutons or whatever. It felt like you dropped a sponge into tomatoes and rung it out into a bowl. I don't disagree with anything you're saying. Three out of ten on the tomato soup for me. Six out of ten on the garlic bread, I mean garlic bread still tastes good.

It wasn't a good garlic bread, but garlic bread is a good food. So I'll go six out of 10 on that. And I'm gonna go five out of 10 on both of these. I think together this was the definition of mediocrity. I was hungry, I consumed it, it was okay. Speaking of the soup, did you notice once we sat down, there were two thermoses of soup at either side of the table. So, yeah, the soup was already present there when we arrived.

It was just sitting in these warming thermoses waiting for someone to pour it into a bowl. Oh, I didn't notice that. Oh, that's an unsexy presentation right there. Okay, and then for our main course, baby dragon. Baby dragon, corn, and potato, baby dragon, tastes just like chicken. It's chicken. It's a half chicken, basically.

You get a breast, a thigh, a wing, and a leg. Pretty good portion. Yeah, the portion was appropriate. All good things about the chicken have been set already. Yeah. This was the worst chicken I've ever had in my life. I don't know how you mess up rotisserie chicken. Do you know how you mess up rotisserie chicken?

You cook 3,000 portions of it at once and you leave it to dry out in a heater all day long. Yeah. Well, mine wasn't even necessarily dry. Mine wasn't either. I think we got more of the juicy parts in the tray. But the juicy is, like, the juiciness of it had a texture, like it had been absorbed in a weird way

to where it felt like spongy. Not in like a, it was improperly cooked spongy where I'm like, like I wasn't worried for safety with this chicken, but just the taste of it, the texture of it, was not good. My God. So I'm gonna give you a quote from my friend Kyle who came with us. This chicken is so bad, it's distracting me from the show. He said that to me about seven minutes after the chicken arrived.

And I like turned over and pointed to something in the show. He's like, I'm not watching. I was like, what? He's like, this chicken is so bad. I'm distracted. Like, I'm not even actively eating it, but I keep thinking about how much I hate this chicken. Yeah. It was lukewarm, messy, tastes like a bag of store bought rotisserie that's been kind of sitting out for a little too long.

No, we're close to as good as Costco. No. I'm given this baby dragon a two out of 10. It had like an orangey seasoning to it that just got all over my fingers but didn't seem to do a lot to flavor it. I don't know, what would you call the flavor attempt of this? It was mildly smoky, a bit of salt,

a bit of garlic, some paprika. I didn't get any garlic. I would have loved to taste garlic. I actually didn't get the garlic until I bit into it. That's why I think there was some juices that were reabsorbed. I also think that the chickens that they're using for this are, I don't want to say malnourished, but when I took a bite of the leg,

I just got skin. It was skin then bone. There wasn't meat for like a good portion of this leg. I had to go like up to the top of it to get any meat and it was discouraging. It was still filling. I could finish most of it. Yeah. It succeeded in making me not hungry. I can't even say that. I like it. Garrett, we finished at Medieval Times and then went to Portillo's. Yeah. I got another meal after Medieval Times because it wasn't filling enough because I didn't want to eat it's. Yeah. I got another meal after medieval times,

because it wasn't filling enough, because I didn't want to eat it all, so I had a lot of food. I didn't. I'll give it a five out of 10. Again, it was five out of 10 on the chicken. It was two out of 10. Exceptable food.

Everyone else thought it was actively bad. I didn't find it to be actively bad. Oh man. It just existed. I ate it. Wow. It was bland. It was bland. I mean, it was a disgrace actively bad. Oh man. It just existed. I ate it. Wow. All right. It was bland. It was bland. I mean, it was a disgrace to chicken. Well, no, it was a disgrace to baby dragons like they're farming and murdering this

magical, wonderful creature. Whoever made this should feel bad about their role in bringing this dish to fruition. Inside of a cave up on top of a mountain there the beast re-sides only one of its kind, according to legend, but wait! What's this sea of find? This mythic behemoth laid some eggs in its layer You sneak up and take some tiptoe out with care Get out before the sleeping dragon's fury You'll just be preventing her babies from maturing

You track them down, back them up Open in your side, you'll down the field across the boat All them to the castle Let them hatch, chain them up, breathe them in the bath steel Super skill voices hide your head that's calling you an echo Dust me your life, station of an endangered species Nothing tastes sweeter than maybe dragon-meek-sees They go to sadness in their in their eyes Compared with the slaughter

The school of fake faggains now go out of the town! That's right, you went to school for this They look so cute, but you can kill them They may be baby dragons, but they're still dragons You can do it, it makes you a dragon slave Oh god, this was so piece, it's so sad! Inside of the kitchen, within the arena, the dish will now be served. You're not a great chef, but you've roasted these offenses this, what they deserve.

They taste just like chicken, not even good chicken. The audience outside are all looking sick and murdered hundreds of this beautiful creature Doing this to poultry would have been so much easier Like physically, logistically, and emotionally And ethically, like in every way, chicken probably was the call Yeah? Yeah So it came with a couple of sides. Corn, this corn, it was like just a little corn cob, and it had such a thick layer of butter

that my teeth went through it when I bit. Like, it's supposed to be just like a little extra light texture typically. It's not supposed to be like a skin of butter. Yeah, okay. But that's what it felt like. You must have gotten like bottom tray corn. I must, and I got top tray corn.

This had like, you know the little like shields in the movie, Dune, that like protect people and they're just like a thin layer of force energy? This was that but with butter. Hahaha. Still tasted okay, but five out of 10 corn. I wish I had that butter on mine. My corn got no butter, no seasoning.

It all probably fell off of mine onto yours. It was dry, it was tough, three and a half out of 10. The only good part of this meal, the best part of this meal to me was the potato. There was like a baked potato that was heavily seasoned on top, wasn't overly buttered, wasn't really under buttered, still only a six and a half out of 10 potato,

but when everything else here sucks so much, six and a half out of 10 is a very welcome dish. I'm gonna give this potato wedge a four out of 10. It was caked in salt for me, like way, way, way too salty. Yeah. I feel like it was my entire day's worth of salt in just one small potato wedge.

I feel like we're only highlighting just the inconsistency of every food item and how drastically different our experiences with everything were. That's what you get when you cook for thousands of people at one time. Yeah, there's no way you could customize something for one person. No. There's no way you could customize something for one person.

No. But the chocolate a Claire, you feel maybe was. Yeah. Okay. Let's go into what happened with our friend Kyle's a Claire. So we had dessert. Now we got the dessert that they normally serve and then we got the celebration package, which basically in hindsight I realized is for like a birthday or anniversary.

I thought it was just like, oh, we'll make a celebration out of it and we'll get closer seats. Like that's the thing that kind of appealed to me and like the banner and all that. So we ended up with two desserts. We get the eclair that comes with everything and then we got like a piece of chocolate cake which we'll get to that. But this eclair was the standard dessert for everybody. Kyle who was sitting close to me took a bite of his eclair and then standard dessert for everybody. Kyle, who was sitting close to me,

took a bite of his eclair, and then he had a short curly hair in his mouth. Now, we're not saying that there was a hair in the eclair, but we are saying that there wasn't a hair in his mouth, and then he took a bite of a clare, and there was a hair in his mouth. And it was shortened curly. I have a theory about this potential shortened curly pubic a Claire You know we can't confirm that it's pubic

I Have a theory pubesca. Yes. This pubesca This pubesca a Claire This was meant for you you think it was like a hit job? This was a hit job. So the two girls that told you you climbed my announcement, they're like, wait, this guy's a troublemaker. We're gonna radio the kitchen and let them know.

And they can see my crown, what section I'm in. Yeah, and like, obviously everything's on camera in this day and age. So they can just zoom the camera in on you point Okay, we're gonna mess with his acclair. I think food tampering is a felony We're gonna put a shortened curly pub in his acclair and then they missed the target. Yes, and then it went to Kyle instead like Theoretically, yeah, I think this is what's happening. I would like to cover our bases and say, this is a hypothesis. Yeah, complete hypothesis.

Not actually what happened, although Kyle previously did not have a shortened curly in his mouth. Now, eating a non pubic acclare, I actually liked the acclare well enough. I guess I expected it to be a different temperature. I don't eat a lot of acclare, as I think I was expecting a warm dessert, and it kinda, it had like a donut look to it.

Just imagine Kyle's experience if his donut were warm. That just gross. It is. I guess what I'm saying is I was judging it based on a different expectation, but all things considered. I thought the filling was honestly pretty decent.

The texture of the actual a clair was probably the only thing where I guess it felt a little less fresh. Like the dough seemed, I guess, a little harder whenever it was covered. Yeah, these bad boys were left open in the walk-in. But I thought I was still a six out of ten Eclare. You know, very puffy, lots of whip. It was decent. I'm gonna give this soggy Eclare a three out of ten. This filling was just way too sweet for me. I took two bites, I just couldn't. Yeah, that's what everyone's doing. I like sweet. I hate it.

You hate sweet. I don't wanna say I hate sweet. You hated being overdone. I hate it being overdone. I have a lower sweet tolerance than a lot of people. Yeah. But now for the sweet that I had no tolerance for, it wasn't sweet.

It's not- It wasn't sweet. Honestly, an apt comparison. This is not like melted. You know when you go to a museum and you put a quarter in and you're in the 90s and you get that wax T-Rex? Oh, this is like a Madame Tussauds cake. This is a Madame Tussauds cake.

Absolutely. It had like a waxy layer on top of like store bought angel food cake almost. It was the worst textured cake. it was the worst textured cake, it was the worst tasting cake. Kyle said it made him angry. I thought it looked like sadness on a styrofoam plate. It was awful.

It tastes like refrigerator, walk-in, and plastic more than anything. Truly, the worst cake I've ever had in my life, I could be wrong, but I think this is the only zero out of 10 I've given on the show. Wow. I give this cake no redeeming qualities, zero out of 10. Haha.

I'm gonna give this cake that tasted worse than a bunch of balloons, a one out of 10. You coward, you gave it a point. I'll give it a point because I could actually chew it. It successfully made it into my stomach. It was by definition edible. It was food. Yeah. It was food and it didn't hurt.

I had hurt my soul a little bit, knowing that we paid extra for it. I'm gonna go two thumbs down on the food. I think I have to. I mean, just everything was so inconsistent. I gave my first zero out of 10 item. I gave another two out of 10 item. I gave a three out of 10 item.

Nothing was top notch in its class by any means. At best, the potato was a tolerably good potato, and that was the most shining thing. And I didn't find any pubes but we can't confirm that no one in our party didn't find any pubes. So two thumbs down on this food trash. I'm gonna be nice. I've worked catering before I understand the task at hand is extremely difficult and the final product was absolute shit. Right. It didn't offend me.

It offended me at every level. I left not hungry. Garrett, the bar for two thumbs down isn't I didn't get poisoned. I just looked at this way. It started off with two five out of ten foods for me. So a five out of ten food would be zero thumbs down. Right. It started at zero thumbs and only got worse.

Right. I'm gonna give this a really, really strong one thumb down, but I'm gonna save them with empathy. You're giving like, they tried. You're giving a one thumb down in the way the emperor did in gladiator, just like an aggressive one thumb down. I'm gonna like an aggressive one-thumb down. I'm gonna give him a one-thumb down participation trophy. Yeah.

Awful. I sought to sabotage the castle's food, but how do meals so odious get worse? Just serving this should be a fence, abuse enough to make their bantermen disperse. But last, their constitutions must be steel. Forged frigid is the timber of their hearts. These monsters crave endangered species' veal, not noticing the danger this imparts. And herein lies the genius of our queen, she bade me tell the dragon of their crimes. This mother wronged will surely intervene.

Now knowing how her children cruelly died. Through food and fire, this kingdom will restore. So wait until you hear the dragons roar. Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, boy, this came up. It's really sucks. Baby Dragon was not worth this! Oh, boy, this came up. It's really sucks. Baby Dragon was not worth this! Oh, boy, this came up.

It's really sucks. Baby Dragon was not worth this! Oh, boy, this came up. It's really sucks. Baby Dragon was not worth this! I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down.

I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. I'm not going to let you down. We got to tally all of these considerations up and put them into a score to give you guys our final rating. But before we do that, let's head on over to Yelp and see what other people are saying about this medieval times location in this week's Yelp from Strangers. We need a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a little, a Give us those complaints while you literally why not die?

Yelp! Okay, this is Yelp from Strangers, our segment where we go to Yelp to see what people are saying about the medieval times that we went to and read out our favorite one, two, three, four, and five star Yelp reviews. There was a lot happening at this medieval time, so let's just say there's a lot on Yelp. 2 star review. I'm gonna start us off with a 2 star review if you don't mind, Garrett. Go for it.

This is from Monica G, January 14th, 2023. I gave it 2 stars. We took my grandson for his birthday. My husband and I paid for 18 tickets. That was over a thousand dollars, which of course we didn't mind. Ooh, big flex. Yeah. But the customer service was horrible. What? I don't know. She just wrote W H E as its own sentence. What? My party got there. We went to take a group pick, which was cool. The ladies were rushing us through, but we understood.

Next go inside and wait till it was time. Went to it, everything went well. Part of our package came with slushies. I ordered eight slushies. The server came back with eight slushies, but only gave us six slushies. He server came back with eight slushies, but only gave us six slushies. He took the other two to two other people and said he'd be back. He almost forgot until he made eye contact with me and Cain back. That's right, Cain.

Did this woman have a stroke? I don't know. I explained I gave him eight tickets. He only gave us six slushies and took the other two. Finally, after questioning, he came back again, Kane with the other two. He had an attitude and said, there you good. I said, yes, well, he turned to walk away and spilled the other drinks he had on his tray onto my phone and food. Then looks at me and says, I'll be back. He never came back to clean what he spilled. The drink started dripping on my sister-in-law. So another server was nice enough to give me napkins to clean up the server's mess. This is a disaster. Then when we were leaving, I had my one-year-old grandmother, nephew and sister and one-year-old

grandmother. I think they mean one-year-old, grandmother. That's what the Oxford commas. But a one-year-old grandmother is a very funny image. And honestly, something you'd expect at medieval times, like a bridge troll would be a one-year-old grandmother. Yeah. Nephew and sister-in-law.

We were waiting for my husband to get us and the ladies in the front told us we couldn't wait in the front. We had to wait in the rain because they had another tournament time. I was highly upset. You're sending women, infants, people with a disability to stand in the rain mind you. She didn't say anything to anyone else standing there. For the money we paid, they can send their staff to get training on customer service. The show was the only

part that was great. I will have to rethink real hard before I suggest medieval times to anyone else. My suggestion don't go when it's raining. Oh, what? Because, you know, when you book these tickets a month out, you know, it's gonna rain. Like, rain just destroys the show. They don't care. They'll send you in the rain to wait for your ride. Two stars. That was so many steps of just misfortune and given her attitude at the end, I kind of feel like Monica was the problem. I think Monica was the problem. Yeah. Anyways, thanks Monica. Five star review. Here we go. Let's go with a positive five star review. Hit me. Charlie E from March 12th of this year. Here yee here yee worth the trip. The tomato bisque is legit and this place is pretty entertaining. The service is prompt.

The piniacalata suck but everything else is top notch. Joustiness hilarious. Hilarious of all the adjectives to describe the jousting. I don't know if hilarious. of all the adjectives to describe the jousting. I don't know if hilarious. If the one then and combat after the jousting is pretty funny. I could see hilarity in that, but people charging at each, that's funny. I love that even though the Pena colada's suck,

you get a five star review. It's like he expected the suckage of the Pena coladas. But hey, no, he's happy because he got to keep his glass. I bet that's it. Sure. If you'd like to hear the rest of our Yelp from Stranger's segment, go on over to our Patreon and we'll be posting all five of our favorite reviews there. You can find the link for that in the description of this episode or just go to patreon.com slash find Final rating. Okay Garret, we've gone through all we've gone through, we've talked about it.

The last thing we need to do is attach a score to medieval times and throw it up on the Chachki of mediocrity. When you factor it all together, how are you feeling? Feeding and entertaining a crowd of 1,000 people, all at once is an extremely difficult task in the best of conditions. Yeah, for sure. Throwing a strike and painfully undersize kitchens all right after the pandemic. Yeah, recipe for disaster 3.09, 3.09, that is low. We have not gone in the threes very often. I'm not quite like you. I didn't go in the threes. I went lower than this is the lowest score that I've given. The allegations from the union, the food, awful, the service.

Take my cake voucher, bro. No, he was fine, but yeah, couple that with I wasn't that impressed with the show. It wasn't bad, but I wanted more, I guess. I'm going 2.68. Wow. I don't feel a strong need to go back to medieval times. I might be willing to go once all the union stuff resolves. I'm 100% gonna go back to that location, once if everything's resolved and the people

that were on the lines get their jobs back, everything's happy. I'll see what it's like. Sure. Well, when we take both of our scores into consideration, medieval times going up on the Chanchaki of Mediocrity at 2.89. Oh God, that's terrible. That is almost as bad as our worst place,

Gattie Town, which scored a 2.70. This was a firmly bad experience. Yeah. And the thing is, it could have been a firmly neutral, depositive experience in different conditions. In different conditions. Yeah. Medieval times scores outside of four to six.

Not mediocre enough. Draw from the bowl. The you must bowl. Pfft. I need to be punished. I selected medieval times for it. Because we were already punished once by having to go there.

I got a draw from the you must bowl our bowl of punishment that tell us something that we must do at the next restaurant. I'm gonna figure out what that is. Okay. You must consume every part of your meal using only a spoon. So at the next place we go, your boy has to be a little spoon boy.

That'll be interesting. Garrett, would you allow spoons plural like if it's something that really needs two utensils, can I at least limit myself to spoons but have multiple? Oh, of course. I don't see why you can't have as many spoons as you want. Okay. Like, the idea of you bringing 100 spoons? That's hilarious.

Yeah, I don't think I'm gonna bring any like I'll ask the restaurant Um, can I have 10 spoons? Different spoon for every bite Wild. All right, well now we need to figure out where am I going to spoon my meal down We need to play a game to figure out our next restaurant. We need to play the headline game out our next restaurant, we need to play the headline game. The rules of the headline game are as follows. Michael will present three headlines to Garrett that include this week's restaurant. They can be made up or they can be actual headlines. If Garrett can correctly guess, at least two out of three are real or fake, he will get

to select next week's restaurant. However, if Michael stumps him, he'll select again. Are you ready to play, fellas? Oh, I'm ready. I have headlines for you, ready? Headline number one. A royal upgrade, medieval times, princesses now hold the queen's crown.

Pfft. I'm gonna go true because that did happen. Headline number two, Megan Markle's medieval times curtsy controversy explained. I can't imagine Megan Markle ever going anywhere near a medieval times. False. anywhere near a medieval times False and headline number three jousting with COVID how medieval times in Orlando emerged victorious in a pandemic whoo I I'm just gonna go false for that headline come on guys joustine with COVID are you kidding me?

I hope you made that up. We'll find out. Headline number one, a royal upgrade. Medieval times princesses now hold the queen's crown. You said true, Garrett, that is false. There were not princesses before. There were kings that are now queens, but princesses, far as I know, never got the upgrade.

Oh, they did make up the headline. In previous iterations of the show, there was a king and the upgrade. Oh, they did make up the headline. In previous iterations of the show, there was a king and a princess. Oh, it was really. Part of the plot was like the princess's hand in marriage, the knights and stuff. So obviously they changed that. I actually didn't know that.

But regardless, wrong, wrong. All right, Megan Markle's medieval times Curzy Controversy explained, you said false Garrett, that's true. In what world does Meghan Markle go to medieval times? Her pre-royalty world. You know that she was a struggling actress for a while, right? I'm gonna read you just a little snippet

from the article about this. Meghan and Harry were discussing her introduction to royal life when they recalled how her first meeting with the queen came about. Like in their 2021 tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey, they noted that Megan didn't know the proper protocol because they hadn't expected to cross paths with Harry's grandmother yet. The suits vet, Grin, as she described her attempt at curtsy-ing to the queen, saying, I mean, Americans will understand this. We have medieval times dinner internament. It was like that. She even demonstrated a very exaggerated bow, chuckled a bit and added,

pleasure to meet you, your majesty, as Harry looked on mostly stone face. To many Brits, the moment was a show of total disrespect. On Twitter, the agreeveside pointed out that everyone is expected to bow to the reigning monarch in public and in private, whether or not they're dating her grandchild. Numerous people felt Megan was mocking the queen

in British culture. If I met the queen, I wouldn't Curtsy, but like, if I was a Curtsy or I'd Curtsy, yeah, I think well, it's just literally that she evoked the name medieval times for the comparison that they took grave offense to. All right, so you're already Owen too, but just for kicks, headline number

three, jesting with COVID, how medieval times in Orlando emerged victorious in a pandemic, you hoped I made that up and I did make that up. Oh, thank God. So now we are faced with the interesting situation where I get to pick the place where I have to go eat with only spoons. And you know what, Garrett? What are you gonna do? Like pick like a cafeteria with a bunch of spoonable foods. No, Garrett, I don't want to make this easy on myself. It's a punishment for a reason. We're gonna go get a shitty steak dinner at Sizzler. What? How do you eat a shitty Sizzler steak with a spoon? I will find out next time.

So thanks everyone for listening to the fine dining podcast, the search for the most mediocre restaurant in America. We didn't find the most mediocre restaurant in America. No, not even close. We found one of the worst dining experiences we've had so far, but we gotta keep looking. Thanks everyone for joining us on our journey so far. Follow us on social media at Find Dining Podcast

on Instagram and TikTok. Email us finddiningpodcast.gmail.com. Tell us what your experiences are with medieval times or sizzler or honestly any of the restaurants we've done so far. If you've got an interesting story, send it in. Of course, if you really want to support us financially, our Patreon is there.

We're offering you good content. We're giving you the uncut version of Yelp from Strangers, where you hear all five reviews, and you get a bonus episode every month. You can download our songs. But the search does in fact continue. We will see you next time. Have a fine day. The sun journey did not conclude The mother of the church continues

Rattles and I too's review And hey, while you're at it Why don't you go ahead and make it five stars? Come on Follow us on TikTok The same on Instagram All the socials at FindDiningPodcast. We have a website FindDiningPodcast.com

Buy our T-shirts, then put them on And don't forget You can always suggest where we go next Okay! We're going to find it Media-crafting The search continues See you next week! I heard my throat a little. Have a fine day!