For 43 years, performers at Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament locations across North America have entertained audiences as jousting knights and lavishly dressed ladies on horseback.
Now, however, the company is facing legal challenges from former employees who allege that its pageantry concealed problems involving animal treatment, sexual harassment, discrimination, bullying and retaliation against workers who reported concerns.
Guests at the shows are served what the company describes as a medieval-style feast while watching armored knights compete on horseback and clash with swords in a staged tournament.
Medieval Times opened its first location in Kissimmee, Florida, near Orlando, in 1983. It now employs more than 2,000 people at 10 “castles” across the United States and Canada.
William Elliot III, 35, an assistant head knight and former Las Vegas magician, makes his entrance as the red knight with fellow performers during a Medieval Times show in Buena Park on Friday, June 28, 2013. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
The production celebrates the knights’ “chivalry,” but former workers say the workplace culture has not always treated female cast members equally.
A former castle “queen” is suing Medieval Times, alleging that the company maintained a workplace “rooted in gender discrimination and sexual harassment.”
A separate former employee claims she was dismissed after raising concerns about the treatment of the company’s horses.
A dispute behind the pageantry
A former performer at the Buena Park, California, castle filed a civil lawsuit in June, alleging that sexual harassment was widespread and that the workplace was hostile.
According to the complaint filed in Orange County Superior Court, Kaitlyn Farrell resigned in February 2024 after five years with the company because of what she described as “intolerable” conditions.
Farrell alleges that the company operated with a “two-tiered workplace culture” in which female performers were treated as “a lesser class of employee.”
She claims unwanted advances toward female employees were “normalized,” gender-based misconduct was tolerated and complaints were met with “indifference.”
During her time at Medieval Times, Farrell said she was asked to serve as a witness in another employee’s workplace-harassment investigation.
That decision allegedly made her the “target of open retaliation by the very employee she reported on,” according to the lawsuit.
Farrell claims management failed to intervene.
In another incident, the lawsuit says, a manager instructed someone to “remove stitching” from Farrell’s costumes. She characterized the act as “calculated sabotage” intended to cause wardrobe malfunctions during live performances.
Farrell also says she became the “primary target of an extreme, sexualized cyberbullying and doxxing campaign” after employees at the Buena Park location unionized and she joined a strike in February 2023.
Brandon Sanchez, who plays a knight, protests outside Medieval Times in Buena Park, California, on Wednesday, March 8, 2023. Performers picketed the castle during an unfair-labor-practice strike against management. (Jeff Gritchen/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images)
The lawsuit alleges that anonymous social media accounts showing “obvious indications” of employee or management involvement published details about Farrell’s dating history, sexually derogatory captions and altered images that placed her face on the bodies of semi-nude cartoon characters in simulated sexual situations.
The alleged harassment later became physical, with Medieval Times employees reportedly traveling to Farrell’s second workplace at another theme park “to physically intimidate her while she was working” to entertain guests.
After Farrell filed formal complaints, an attorney for Medieval Times allegedly dismissed the cyberbullying and stalking allegations in a written letter as “weird allegations.”
“We look forward to proving these allegations in court,” Farrell’s attorney, Charles Ludd Jr., told News Media.
‘False claims,’ former worker says
Medieval Times did not respond to a request for comment on the lawsuit. Former employee Bill Elliot, however, described Farrell’s allegations as “false claims.”
Elliot worked as a knight at the same location until leaving in 2015 after 12 1/2 years. He told News Media in a text message that he had no complaints about the company.
“The company took care of us,” Elliot wrote. “We had decent pay; full-time hours with overtime … full medical, dental and vision insurance; and 401K.”
William Elliot III, 35, an assistant head knight and former Las Vegas magician, prepares to toss a flower to an audience member while performing as the red knight during a Medieval Times show in Buena Park on Friday, June 28, 2013. (Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Elliot said he believed some people accusing the company were part of what he called the “the-rich-need-to-pay-their-fair-share group” and were seeking a financial payout.
“They have no responsibility in running a company that employs thousands of people and no risk in doing it, but believe they deserve more of the profit,” he said.
“If it was such a toxic environment and company, they could have immediately removed themselves, but didn’t,” he added.
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Elliot also claimed that female performers commonly sought attention from the knights and went to significant lengths to receive it.
“Now, because those females didn’t get their way or what they wanted, they started making false claims and screaming ‘toxic masculinity’ or any other buzzwords to get attention,” he said.
Claims involving the horses
Farrell’s case is not the first lawsuit to raise allegations about conditions at the dinner theater company.
In a 2019 lawsuit, Bethany Regan said she joined the Buena Park castle in 2013 and was treated “less favorably” than male performers, according to court documents.
Regan said she became increasingly worried about the welfare of the horses used in performances and reported her concerns to management.
The lawsuit alleges that the head trainer had a “volatile temper” and struck horses with a whip “unnecessarily,” leaving them with “large welts” across their bodies.
Regan also alleged that some horses were trained in ways that caused bleeding from their mouths and other parts of their bodies. According to her complaint, horses were overworked and at times denied rest until they became dehydrated.
She alleged that one horse died as a result.
Regan said she had been warned that the head trainer was a close friend of the company owner and that raising concerns could lead to “retaliation.” She reported them nonetheless.
She also raised concerns about “dangerous and unsafe working conditions” affecting female performers.
After filing formal complaints, Regan alleges the company suspended her for “starting rumors” before later terminating her employment.
The lawsuit was settled in 2020, and the terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
Regan’s attorney did not respond to News Media’s request for comment.
The debate over horses onstage
Yvonne Barteau spent six years as principal trainer and director of entertainment operations at Arabian Nights Dinner Attraction, a horse-themed dinner theater located minutes from a Florida Medieval Times castle. The attraction operated from 1988 to 2014.
Barteau now operates a Florida horse rescue called Horses without Humans. She established it after producing a documentary about theater horses in the United States.
Over the years, Barteau worked with many Medieval Times performers as they moved among dinner theater jobs in the Orlando area, she told News Media.
She said young performers sometimes became “way too into their role, like they’re really medieval warriors,” adding, “I think they got too into the identity.”
Yvonne Barteau performs with her gray stallion, Papi, at Spirit of the Horse. (Courtesy of Cheri Prill/Stunning Steeds Photography)
That attitude, she said, sometimes led male performers to treat women “in a callous way,” while management failed to condemn the behavior as firmly as it should have.
Dinner theater jobs “seemed to attract people like that. And then sometimes the upper management didn’t shut it down like they should have,” Barteau said.
She encountered “good people” at Medieval Times, along with others she did not consider as kind, she said.
Regardless of the circumstances, Barteau said, there is no justification for abusing a horse.
“Anybody that works with horses, or works with something that has no voice of its own—children, horses, any animal—you have to be the voice,” she said.
At the same time, she said, people with limited experience around horses can assume that any equestrian performance is inherently cruel.
Barteau said that conclusion is not always accurate.
“They haven’t seen how some horses really do light up, and they do love to be out there performing,” she said. “They love the attention.”
Barteau has performed for years with a stallion named Papi.
“He’s an absolute theater horse—he’s a Brad Pitt.
“People see that horse, and they remember him, and it makes them love horses. And why wouldn’t we want that, you know, as horse lovers? Why would we want somebody else to fall in love with horses?”