Erin Zapcic spent 13 years as a Medieval Times monarch before her dynasty crumbled, and now she is speaking publicly about the labor fight building at the Buena Park castle. Leaning against her 2016 Mazda 3 near the arena, she said she is no longer onstage in the role that defined her, but she is still tied to the place in a different way.
Zapcic now works as a business administrator, yet she said the job still lives in her head long after the costume came off. “When you work at Medieval Times, it becomes part of your identity,” she said. “And I’m struggling now because there’s a stupid little voice in my head going, ‘You’re not queen anymore.’”
She and former knight Jake Bowman helped lead performers in a stand over working conditions and wages at Buena Park Medieval Times, one of 10 castles the company runs across North America and part of a business that draws an estimated 2.5 million guests a year. The show sells a spectacle built on jousting, acrobatics and a four-course meal served without utensils, with guests sorted by color and seated in tiered rows around a sand-filled arena. At $77.95 a ticket, it is still one of the company’s most visible draws.
The fight matters now because it is unfolding while the brand is enjoying a viral revival, with its knights recast as TikTok heartthrobs, even as the labor dispute has widened. A public filing before the National Labor Relations Board said pay for stable hands started around $16.75 an hour, while Bowman and Zapcic said they were making $18.50 and $21.50, respectively, in a county where the median household income tops $100,000.
Zapcic did not frame her break with the company as a matter of money alone. “I loved my job. But I couldn’t stand by while they mistreated us and the animals,” she said, drawing a line between the performance she loved and the workplace she says she could no longer defend.
That split is what makes the story harder for the company to manage. The same performers who helped sell the fantasy are now helping challenge it, and the conflict had already spilled into unionization drives at two castles, multiple lawsuits and claims of sexual harassment by the time she spoke. What remains unanswered is how far the performers can push for change inside a business built to make medieval pageantry look seamless.
