Welcome to Medieval Times

Attendance is down about 20 percent from a year ago, says marketing and sales manager Katrina Stroup, but promotional deals on tickets have kept crowds coming. "We're the escape from reality, from all the bad news," she says.

This Medieval Times opened in Lawrenceville in 2006, the ninth in a chain that started in Spain in 1973. This month the Gwinnett castle has switched over to a new show, one that adds more of an overall story, with some extra romance. There's now a newlywed prince and princess, the prince gets kidnapped, and everyone is fretting over whether he will return home, but meanwhile just watch a joust and cheer and forget you're wearing a cardboard crown.

The show, which runs an hour and 45 minutes, moves with relentless precision. A thousand or so people start out milling convivially in a huge lobby full of young boys dueling with flashing plastic souvenir swords (and many more souvenir opportunities, from refrigerator magnets to full suits of armor). Customers are herded into the dining room en masse, given the high-decibel rundown by wenches and serfs, and the production starts barrelling rapidly along parallel lines: Feast and fun.

Food first. The wenches and serfs never stop moving (tips are requested; you'll want to have some cash for the hardest-working servers you've seen) as they dish up tomato soup, garlic bread, half a roast chicken, a sparerib, half a twice-baked potato, and a generic pastry. Everybody gets the same thing, assembly-line style, although special dietary needs will be met if you speak up. Booze costs extra, but you can get a drinkable glass of Merlot for $6.

While the food is being served and eaten, the cast of 25 is knocking itself out. The men playing the knights tend to be young and good-looking and know it, and the women and girls in the audience enjoy these macho, armor-clad guys on horseback thundering around the arena in strobe-lit smoke. Even here, Medieval Times doesn't miss a trick. When the knights toss flowers or bestow their tokens (a scarf on a lance) on female customers, they deliberately don't give them to the cutest ones, making connections instead with giggling little girls or their grandmas.

(Chances are your kids won't notice the sexy symbolism those chivalrous types built around the lance.)

The jousting is done with break-away lances. but the sword-fighting, if not real in the strictest sense, is very physical; sparks jump from the steel swords as they clang together and it really looks like someone could get hurt out there.

"They're very physically demanding," J.D. Kennedy, the show's head knight, says of the sword fights. "But injuries are pretty rare, maybe a twisted ankle or two. You've just got to focus."

It's a strangely involving and, for a while, dislocating experience. You may not quite believe you're in the show's settting of 11th century Spain, but you sure don't feel like you're in a mall in Gwinnett, either.

Medieval Times. 5900 Sugarloaf Parkway, Lawrenceville. Tickets: $49.95; $37.95 for 12 and under; $35.95 at matinees. (Check for money-saving promotions.) Times vary but are generally 7:30 p.m. Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 5 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays and 5 p.m. Sundays. 770-225-0230. www.medievaltimes.com.