For 43 years, Medieval Times Dinner & Tournament performers across North America have captivated audiences as jousting knights and bejeweled ladies on horseback.
But now the companys own castle is under siege as former employees allege in lawsuits that the company shrouds a culture of animal cruelty, sexual harassment, discrimination, bullying and retaliation for reporting abuse.
At the shows, guests dine on whats billed as a medieval-style feast, as they cheer on armor-clad knights, who participate in a tournament on horseback and battle with swords.
The chain established its first location in near Orlando, in 1983. The company now employs more than 2,000 at 10 “castles” in the United States and Canada.
The theaters show champions the “chivalry” of their knights. But some who work alongside those performers say the culture is biased against female cast members.
A former “queen” of the castle is now suing the company, alleging a workplace environment “rooted in gender discrimination and sexual harassment.”
Another whistleblower alleged that she was fired for voicing concerns about animal cruelty.
A civil lawsuit was filed in June by a former cast member of the castle. She alleges a hostile work environment with widespread sexual harassment.
Kaitlyn Farrell resigned in February 2024 because of “intolerable” conditions after joining the company as a “queen” five years earlier, according to the lawsuit filed in the Superior Court of California, in Orange County.
The “two-tiered workplace culture” treats female cast members as “a lesser class of employee,” she said in the lawsuit.
Farrell alleges that unwanted sexual advances toward female employees are “normalized” and “gender-based misconduct” and that complaints are “dismissed” with “indifference.”
While working at Medieval Times, she was asked to be a witness in a workplace harassment investigation for another employee.
That made her the “target of open retaliation by the very employee she reported on,” her lawsuit alleges.
Management stood by and did nothing, she said.
On another occasion, according to the lawsuit, a manager ordered someone to “remove stitching” from her costumes, what she calls a “calculated sabotage” that was “maliciously intended to cause wardrobe malfunctions in front of live audiences.”
After employees unionized at the Buena Park location, and she participated in a strike in February 2023, Farrell said she became the “primary target of an extreme, sexualized cyberbullying and doxxing campaign.”
Anonymous social media accounts with “obvious indications” of employee or management involvement posted content such as her dating history, sexually derogatory captions and photoshopped images with her face “on the bodies of semi-nude cartoon characters depicted in simulated sexual positions,” the lawsuit alleges.
DISNEYLAND, ACTORS’ UNION CLASH OVER PARENTAL LEAVE, BENEFITS AS UNION NEGOTIATES FIRST CONTRACT
The harassment escalated to physical stalking when Medieval Times employees “traveled to Ms. Farrell’s secondary workplace” at another theme park “to physically intimidate her while
