Do you remember Medieval Times?
Not the era but the dinner show.
You know, big castle along the road.
Eating dinner with your hands, downing flagons of Pepsi, all the while knights battle it
out for your amusement.
It’s a unique experience that exists in the twilight between full-blown high-budget
theme parks and the state fairs that roll into town every year, and as it turns out,
it’s an experience that began with actual Spanish nobility.
Jim Carrey: Let the games begin!
Jose Montaner hailed from the island of Mallorca off the coast of Spain.
Aside from being a businessman who owned a popular barbeque restaurant in the 1960s,
Jose was Spanish nobility.
His mother was the Countess of Peralada and as a result, his family held the rights to
use the title of Viscount of Rocaberti.
Now in the modern world it usually just amounts to a fancy title and a big flag lets everybody
know that you’re probably super-rich.
Regardless, it was likely that status of nobility and family history that dates back hundreds
of years that gave Montaner quite an interest in medieval history.
In the late 60s, he was looking to expand his business but he found an increasing amount
of competition in the barbecue space.
So inspired by his interest in medieval history as well as the 1961 Charlton Heston film El
Cid, which was set in 11th century Spain, he decided to try something different for
his next business venture.
The concept was a Medieval themed dinner show, complete with sword fights, horse tricks,
and jousting.
The staff there would be in character and in costume, and in an effort to feel more
accurate to the era, all of the food would be eaten by hand.
The first location for this Medieval dinner tournament was opened on the mainland Spain
and operated there for a few years before being moved closer to his home back in Mallorca.
In 1977, after a number of successful years, he opened a second location in Spain.
One that still exists today and is currently known as the Magic Robin Hood Dinner Show.
With two flourishing locations, Montaner eventually set his sights on the United States.
He partnered with an American businessman by the name of Alfonso Chavez, who was living
in Spain at the time and was specifically looking for an amusement in Europe to bring
back to the states.
So Montaner formed a company called Inverspan, hired Chavez, and began to seek out Spanish
investors for the venture.
In 1981 they looked to the US for the perfect location and they found themselves in Kissimmee,
Florida.
It was a pretty good choice too.
In 1981 Disney was hard at work on their second theme park in Orlando, EPCOT Center.
It wasn’t even open yet, but just the simple fact that the industry leader was investing
over a billion dollars on a second gate sent a strong message in support of the future
of the region.
Parks like Circus World and SeaWorld had already opened, and countless other smaller amusements
were springing up in order to catch some of the spillover business resulting from families
vacationing in Florida.
Chavez, who was heavily leading in the American expansion, found a 14-acre parcel of land
along US-192, just twenty minutes from Walt Disney World.
There, they would build a $3.5 million dollar castle.
The 50,000 square foot castle was inspired by others from 12th-century Spain and was
designed to seat up to one-thousand guests at a time.
It was a capacity that lead them to predict that someday they might be the 3rd or 4th
largest attraction in the area in terms of attendance.
When it came to naming the experience, the group toyed around with paying homage to one
of its original inspirations.
Both El Cid and El Castilla del Cid were in the running.
They even considered hiring Charlton Heston to host the grand opening.
However, the two options were dropped when it was discovered that there was a restaurant
in Miami using the name.
And the idea of grabbing Charlton Heston was dropped when they realized he was too expensive.
They also reportedly considered “A Dinner Theater in a Castle”, which is, I don’t
know, perhaps my favorite instance of the pendulum swinging all the way in the other
direction.
Instead, they settled on ‘Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament’, which was a big improvement,
even if it was still pretty on-the-nose.
Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament was planned to be a similar experience to its Spanish
counterparts.
Guests would dine on chicken, ribs, and potatoes, not to mention authentic Medieval Pepsi.
Depending on where you were seated, you’d be encouraged to cheer for a specific knight
sporting a matching colored banner.
Those knights would compete in equestrian challenges, single combat, and perhaps most
famously, jousting.
The price for the whole experience?
$19 for adults and $12 for children.
Taking it a step further, Chavez originally wanted to pair the dining theater experience
with a Medieval themed village that would act as a shopping center, featuring 8-10 stores.
However, plans for that were put on hold in order to tackle the restaurant’s launch.
Because as Medieval Times approached its opening day in December of 1984, the question that
still remained was whether or not there was an audience for a Medieval themed dinner show.
Would guests, flocking down to Florida for Disney World, Mickey Mouse, and beaches really
have time or interest in an experience like that?
The answer was a resounding ‘yes’.
Medieval Times was an instant success.
Within the first two months, weekend shows were completely booked, as were most weeknight shows.
Some in the press speculated that part of its popularity was tied to the rise in popularity
of Dungeons & Dragons at the time, which fit perfectly with the media’s complete lack
of understanding of what D&D was in the early 80s.
Reporter: The dark shadows of the day soon crept into Mike’s dreams as wild grizzly
nightmares haunted his sleep.
But no.
It wasn’t D&D.
Instead the dinner theater’s success had more to do with their strategy of partnering
heavily with bus-based tour groups and schools.
By working to have a Medieval Times Dinner added onto multi-day bus tours, they found
themselves winning over the favor of seniors on vacation, who tended to want an easy all-in-one
vacation.
And by offering an entertaining and cheap experience that had a connection with history,
they caught the attention of schools when it came time to plan class trips.
By the end of the first year, Medieval Times’ program manager, Dee Dee Fisher, estimated
that 80% of high school trips in the region included a visit to their show.
The company was also quick to offer events, such as birthday parties, and was host to
larger annual events like a 100-horse horse auction that took place in 1984.
Lastly, and a bit unexpectedly, they found themselves to be popular among Brazillian
and other international tourists.
Why?
Well, the heavy emphasis on combat and jousting meant that it was a pretty easy story to follow
even if you didn’t know English.
Medieval Times set an attendance goal of 120,000 guests for their first year.
By the end of that 12 month period, they had surpassed 200,000.
With such rapid success, the owners quickly began to plan for expansion, considering both
New Jersey and California as possible spots for a second US location.
Sure enough, they would open their second castle in Buena Park, California in 1986 and
their third in Lyndhurst, New Jersey in 1989.
Then, in 1989, Chavez would see his original plans sort-of come to fruition with the opening
of Medieval Life.
The $2 million expansion sat next to the castle and was a small village that offered guests
a look into how people lived and worked during the era.
Admission to the village was $6 for adults and $4 for kids, and many of the props used
in the village were either from Northern Spain or from Jose Montaner’s family in Mallorca.
Over the following few years, the popularity of the show would only grow from there, with
Orlando attendance surpassing half a million guests in 1990, and reaching 600,000 annual
guests by 1993.
Today there are ten Medival Times locations, including castles in Georgia, Maryland, Illinois,
Texas, South Carolina, and Ontario.
Medieval Times is a product of being in the right place at the right time.
Had they expanded to the US just a few years earlier, the market might not have been ready
for them.
Had they gone to any other city, they wouldn’t have had the legions of Disney tourists to
count on.
And had they not expanded as much as they did, when they did, it might have remained
one of the many small one-off Orlando amusements that succumbed to oversaturation and disappeared.
But against all of those odds, they created something that has lasted for nearly 40 years
and has become a part of American culture.