Previous Adventures
Front Page
Family Round-up
Just the FAQs
Previous Adventures
Even earlier adventures...
Snow!
Year 2000 Update
1999 Annual Report
Goin' To The Fair
Family Camp
Medieval Times
Homeschool News
Homeschool Connection - "Feathered Friends" (WYZZ-TV, Mar 10 2010)
Homeschool Connection - "Feathered Friends" (WYZZ-TV, Mar 10 2010)
Homeschool 101 Activities: Can our students play sports with the public schools? (Examiner.com, Mar 10 2010)
Homeschool Basketball Championship expected to draw more than 8,500 to Springfield (Springfield News-Leader, Mar 10 2010)
Local Information
Diamond Bar City Council meeting called off (SGV Tribune, Mar 10 2010)
Diamond Bar teen author hopes her story inspires others (Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Mar 9 2010)
Man assaulted, robbed in Chino Hills (San Bernardino County Sun, Mar 8 2010)
Man assaulted, robbed in Chino Hills (Inland Valley Daily Bulletin, Mar 8 2010)
Jamie, Lori and Joe root for the Green Knight.
Joe and Jamie with some "friends."
Some of the knights on horseback. There's our champion in front.
Medieval Times
It is said that one of the ways you can tell if someone's a native Southern Californian (as all the Five Fischers are) is whether they have been to attractions that seem to draw the out-of-town visitors (usually, the natives haven't). Oh, sure, we go to Disneyland, but that's about it. Until recently, we had not been to one of the more popular "also see's" in the area, Medieval Times.But we were wrapping up a unit on that era of history in our homeschool, and based on a recommendation by Jeff's brother Terry (head of the famous Four Fischers of Phoenix clan--and if they had a Web site we'd link there HINT, HINT :-), we decided to go. And we had a great time!
As you enter the door, you're assigned to one of (on our night, at least) six different knights, each of which has a color. You are also seated together with your fellow rooters in an appropriately color-themed section of the arena, and encouraged to cheer your champion and, well, not cheer the others.
The show starts with a good dinner, served at your arena seats (it works, but we can't explain exactly how). The kids enjoyed the waitress--oops, that is the serving wench's "authentic" introductions to each course. Joe was especially amazed to find himself eating dragon...quite good too. Tastes like chicken.
The entertainment starts as you're eating dinner. The preliminaries consist of some pageantry with the knights riding in on their steeds, followed by some pretty amazing demonstrations of horsemanship. The main event is an all-out "battle" among the knights to see who will defend the realm against the evil invader. Some of the hand-to-hand combat with period weapons gets pretty intense. These guys are obviously trained stunt men and know what they're doing...and trust each other a lot!
The Five Fischers give it 8 out of 10 thumbs up. The only down side is the persistent souvenir offers and other "buying opportunities" that start from the time you walk in the door and don't stop until you walk out. It's not exactly a cheap night out for the family to start with, so we decided ahead of time not to buy anything extra once we were there. Believe us, it wasn't easy, but we made it. Other than that, it was a very entertaining and (somewhat) educational time for the whole family (we'd say ages four and up).