Mrs. Conception

This Thanksgiving, being roughly 8 hours south of my family, 8 hours north of Mr. Andrews’s family, and inconveniently far from the Macy’s parade, we had our Thanksgiving dinner at Medieval Times. Neither one of us had been to anything like this, so we didn’t know what to expect. But to tell you the truth, it was pretty awesome.

Medieval Times, already decked out for Christmas

It was surprisingly crowded – I was a sort of expecting that we would be the only two people there. But there was a long line by the time the King, The Princess, and the king’s right hand man (aka guy who told us what to do) came out to greet us and start the show. We were assigned to the green team – indicated by our stylish green cardboard crowns – which ruled because the Green Knight was a mercenary bad-ass and was the most fun to root for. Not like the skinny, hippie-looking Red Knight (who was our knight’s rival).

They did an intro into the whole show, explaining that the king’s brother had been killed in the war and they needed to have a knight competition in order to choose a new heir.

Medieval M.C.

Then they did lots of horse tricks and bird tricks with a hawk and elaborate intros of each of the six knights (Green, Red, Blue, Yellow, Red and Yellow, & Black and White) to keep us entertained while we ate.

The meal was fun. They served everything on pewter plates (which we were strictly forbidden from banging, as we would scare the horses) and we didn’t have any utensils. Yay, eating with our fingers!

The menu is set – everybody gets the same thing. We ate:

• Garlic Bread
• Vegetable Soup (drunk straight from the bowl)
• Roasted Chicken
• Spare Rib
• Baked Potato
• “Castle Pastry” (an Apple Turnover)
• Pepsi

There was also a barmaid who served other drinks in funky cups (my favorite had flashing lights), but we just stuck with what we had already paid for. Everything was really good!

My crown was a bit too big…

The main events started after the main course. The knights came out to compete in little games, like collecting rings on their lances, or picking up flags while riding on their horses and tossing them back anfd forth between riders. It was pretty entertaining.

But the it was time to fight! There was sort fighting and mace fighting, hand to hand combat, and of course jousting!

It was clearly choreographed and corny, but we had lots of fun.

It was great to cheer and boo. Mr. Andrews, a veteran SEC football fan, is an expert at cheering with years of face painting, jumping, yelling, and screaming for his team under his belt. This made the experience all the more amusing, and came in handy, too. I couldn’t seem to get a good picture of the Green Knight so Mr. Andrews yelled to him and he looked right at me. I got the shot. I complimented Mr. Andrews on his good use of voice. His response: “This is not my first time.”

The Green Knight

So, after all the fighting, there was a big surprise ending. Very showy. It was tons of fun, really. I am very glad we did it.

So is jousting and finger foods our new Thanksgiving tradition? We’ll see…