New Age for Diners: 11th Century

Buena Park is home to the newest Serf City, USA--a theater where about 570,000 people this year will wear funny hats and pay up to $25 to eat with their hands and watch horsemen try to knock each other back to the Middle Ages.

And they said chivalry wouldn’t sell in Southern California.

When Medieval Times opened almost two years ago, industry observers predicted that the Buena Park restaurant and theater couldn’t attract a consistent stream of patrons.

After all, its format was odd, unchanging and unquestionably out of date. At least 11 times a week, knights do battle and joust for a fair lady’s hand. Serfs and wenches stand eager and waiting to do their masters’ bidding. And guests do exactly what everybody’s mother said not to do--eat with their fingers.

But Orange County’s Medieval Times--one of only two such restaurants in the United States--has done so well that its owners are seriously considering opening another restaurant in San Diego and possibly one more north of Los Angeles.

Its success hasn’t gone unnoticed. Starting next month, 1520 A.D.--a restaurant patterned after the era of King Henry VIII--plans to reopen about half a mile away. Its owners hope to eventually expand to about 10 locations, mostly in California.

The competing restaurants could find themselves jousting for customers. “As big as the area is, I don’t think that two makes sense,” said Stanley Kyker, executive vice president of the California Restaurant Assn.

For the time being, though, Medieval Times has a monopoly on the Middle Ages.

An estimated 820,000 patrons have paid $18 to $28 each to visit Medieval Times since its opening. Last month, 49,000 customers saw the show--an increase of almost 30% from 38,000 in March, 1987.

And by the end of this year, Medieval Times expects to set an all-time attendance record of 570,000 patrons. That would generate gross sales of $18 million to $20 million, said Executive Vice President Andres Gelabert.

Right now, there are only a few restaurants with a medieval touch. The Abbey in San Diego serves conventional dinners in a 95-year-old church with stained-class windows and beamed, vaulted ceilings--but it long ago did away with costumed monks as waiters.

In Marina del Rey and Irvine, Gulliver’s is an Old English-style restaurant with servers dressed as wenches and squires and a dark, pub-like interior.

In the early 1970s, there were three 1520 A.D. restaurants in Los Angeles, Anaheim and San Diego. These medieval taverns served a single-course dinner of either beef or meadow hen and featured a noisy, bawdy show in which patrons were placed in the stocks, and customers were encouraged to hurl bread at neighboring diners. The company expanded to seven restaurants throughout the country before business soured and the chain closed.

One of the prior owners, Daud Alani, plans to reopen 1520 A.D. on May 15 in its original Anaheim location on Beach Boulevard. Alani says patrons will be entertained by a court jester, a magician, singing women and King Henry VIII himself.

Medieval Times’ show is clearly aimed at the middle aged--by about 895 years. It takes place in a hall done up to resemble an 11th-Century castle in the days of Camelot. The action takes place on a dirt floor in the middle of a 70,000-square-foot arena.

Patrons sit in theater seats behind long, wooden tables, wearing paper crowns that are coordinated with the color of the knight representing their seating section. Those wearing green crowns, for example, cheer on a green-garbed knight--while booing and hissing his rival, a black-and-white knight who’s jousting for the section across the arena.

A big part of the appeal is that customers become part of the show--sometimes going so far as tossing a chicken bone into the arena to show their support. Sections of the 1,000-seat Grand Ceremonial Arena gang up and compete with each other, shouting their support and responding noisily when “their” knight scores a win.

The restaurant is owned by private investors who started the first Medieval Times 22 years ago in Majorca, a Mediterranean island located off the coast of Spain. The partnership runs a second similar operation at Benidorm in the Alicante region of Spain.

The concept was imported to the United States in December, 1983, when the partnership opened a Medieval Times in a 1,100-seat arena in Kissimmee, Fla., near Disney World. The Florida facility today hosts about 480,000 patrons each year. Attendance in Orange County this year should outstrip the Florida restaurant.

Of course, putting on a meal fit for King Arthur isn’t always a cinch. Despite the Middle-Ages atmosphere, Medieval Times has more than its share of modern-day problems.

While the jousting is staged, injuries aren’t. The knights practice two to four hours daily, said Powell, the spokeswoman. Even so, one knight’s leg was broken recently when he was hit with a lance during a performance, she said.

Maintaining a show with more than 35 horses and 70 performers is costly, too. And while much of the restaurant’s business comes from word-of-mouth recommendations, about $600,000 a year is spent on marketing, Powell said.