Last week, I got married in Las Vegas. Which was a compromise for me but was pretty awesome in some pretty cool ways. Part of that was that since my wife knows that one of my major loves is swordplay, and watching jousting, she got us tickets to tournament of Kings at Excalibur. Before I go into it further I have to explain one thing, and make sure everyone knows something about it all before we went in. Before we even left the hotel room, I made my wife promise that whenever I got too skeptical or argumentative about any of the show that she was to remind me that it was, just a show, honestly this saved me a lot of mental anguish as some of it was hard to stomach in historical accuracy as well as plenty of other things.
Just know that in the following assessment that I may spoil suspense for those who are looking at seeing this show.
So, lets start there. In so much as they tried to create a fun environment where everyone could cheer for their "Country" it worked, the only problem was that none of the "countries" would have existed as we know them at the time of King Arthur. kind of a minor thing, I know but still an important one to me.
As far as the Mythology of Arthur goes, in this rendition, he had a son who (Spoiler alert) becomes the champion at the end. This son is not Mordred, as has been said for quite a while of the myth is Arthur's bastard son, but one would assume his legitimate heir. (Though Guinevere is absolutely missing so who knows what the story there is, or if this time is supposedly after she runs off with Lancelot) As is tradition, Mordred plays the major villain in counterpoint to Arthur, and his other son's hero role.
The Jousting was hardly that if you can call it jousting at all. If I were a betting man I would have been able to point out who was going to win each run down the lysts as the victor had their lance aimed (Albeit wrongly) where as their opponent did not bring their lance down at all to even come close to aiming at the other. The problem to me was the form. High extended elbows while looking good would throw out your shoulder if it came into hard impact with the opponents shield or armor. What is needed but was never used was a couched lance bringing it down and tighter to the body rather than way high on the outside. The Lances were tipped with likely Balsa or some other light or easily breakable wood, which is great for a show, but would be silly for actual practice. I would also argue that the length of the lyst gave no room to get to full speed when hitting but that is to be expected since it is dinner show jousting. In the case of the scoring, the only thing that counted was knocking a man off his horse which when you are not dropping back and then intentionally falling, is a lot harder than it looks, not only that I do not know of anyone who would only score a hit if it unhorsed your opponent. Though it is always scored higher than another hit, it is never the be all and end all in a joust, otherwise matches could go for much much longer all the time.

When it came to the sword play and fighting, nothing was so clear as the amount of dance and choreography  in play in these fights. Though at the time, swords would have been of the earlier types of single handed swords, many of the ones used were definitely of a longer style not used or possible at the time in which King Arthur lived. Part of the problem with it was that the sword play often included the use of the second hand on the pommel which is by no means right for the period. Some of the hits were stage hits, followed by theatrical rolling, or jumps, making it fun to watch but far from accurate in any sense of the word.

Overall, it was a fun show but was definitely a show, and I had to be reminded of it on a regular basis, in order to enjoy the show. It was fun, and there were definitely exciting and cool effects that were used, some of which I understood better when Cindy explained how some of it was done since her background is stage work and pyrotechnics. Knowing that it was not going to be exact or right in many ways, did make it more enjoyable in that once i got over what was wrong it was fun to sit back and enjoy it for what it was, just a show.